Cake
by rednightmare
Summary: A Dust Town bruiser and her fellow Warden recruits wind down over a lonely fire-pit and burnt rabbit. (A series of short vignettes and character exploration.)
1. Cake

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: The first fanfic I ever wrote. It's horribly outdated now, and I'm decently embarrassed by the writing, but I can't bring myself to take it down. Maybe it will get an overhaul someday when I've got more time on my hands. Until then, here remains my submission to the Brosca fandom - not too pretty, a little fat, but nevertheless digging in.  
**

**Chapters are usually non-sequential and often written in self-sustaining one-shot form. **

* * *

**CAKE**

* * *

Blood on hands, grit under all ten fingernails. Blood soaking through the leather gloves, reeking alongside forest dampness. Blood boiling beneath her face-brand, worthless without a caste to trace it – and all Annie-Lynn Brosca could do was smile.

'_Cake!' _she thought, grinning ear to wind-red ear whilst driving a skinning knife deep into the rabbit's belly. Organs spilled out, still steaming, onto the orange autumn leaves. '_Cake is what it is. Let's see, now. I'll sign on with these Gray Warden fellows, sure enough – not that there's much choice in the matter. Can't go back now, aye!' _Strange as thought it might've looked, what with her tiny fingers digging somewhere in the vicinity of dinner's kidneys, a chuckle barked past Annie's teeth. She shucked off the remaining skin like a farmer would an ear of corn._ 'Hah! Already made a topsider outta' me, and all.'_

It was a cold Korcari night… black like Annie had never seen, even buried under miles of soot and stone. In Orzammar, there was no change of days – the darkness was a stale, steady constant – only a few snuffed torches away. Though such a prospect depressed and terrified the surface folk, real dwarves more oft found it comforting. Below, there was no sundown to dread; no yawning emptiness overhead to gulp you up. Furthermore, there were no howling, bristling marshlands to raise the fine hairs on one's neck. It would've seemed preposterous to any light-loving human, no doubt… but oddly enough, slavering darkspawn and murderous deshyrs still seemed a smaller threat than what horrors a mind could dredge up when left to wander through a darkening wood.

Annie-Lynn wasn't scared, though… not in the least. She'd been meted out from stronger mortar than most. After all, once one found the stones to look Beraht's pet lieutenant in her painted face and sing out the word "whore," whatever rustled about these wilds paled in comparison.

'_Now, what was I just thinkin' about? Ah, right. My master plan,' _the girl reminded herself, whistling a dear old tune whilst she worked. One hand thoughtlessly raked a few bothersome bangs out of the way, thickening black locks with rabbit blood. She suspected having to whack it off fair soon. Even with most of her mane wound back and braided, Annie never could manage to keep the stuff out of her face. Rica'd been nagging her little tagalong about combing it proper since they were barely off their mother's milk.

No surprise there, either. Big Sister had always been the beautiful one, and a damn long time before Beraht came along flaunting his fancy dresses with their hundreds of bronze buttons. Gown or not, Rica had three feet of rolling, lava-red tresses and hourglass curves that would've made any sane man weak in the knees. She had plenty of opportunity to be a real bitch about it if the lady had wanted, too. But alas, no – sweet as she was striking, Sissy only smiled and graciously turned away the hordes of lovelorn would-be suitors that came a'calling… while a fist-clenched Annie stood in the doorway, armed with protective glares, punching friends for falling in love with her sibling.

The youngest Brosca, on the other hand, got her looks from their worthless father – a fact which Mother never failed to remind her. She was shorter than Rica, stockier; a bruiser's body with quick muscle and powerful thighs layered underneath the tiniest bit of pudge. Beady, pitch-colored eyes glittered from beneath coarse raven hair; a wide mouth covered grinning teeth; her brand lay crudely smudged into skin unclaimed by any house. It was not a hideous face, Annie thought; complete with round, ruddy cheeks and a dimpled smile. But neither was it particularly gorgeous. Then again, few were compared to Sissy.

That was all right with Annie-Lynn, though. The younger sister might've been destined for a rough-and-tumble lifestyle, but ugly ducklings were a good throw less likely to end up waddling around thick with noble bastard. She'd take a blade in the gullet before becoming some blue-blood's whipping post in a half a heartbeat.

Just then – snickering over some stupid thing they'd been bickering about that morning, when Duncan entered her life and changed everything – Annie's sanity gave a little kick. _'Yeesh. Can't you keep focused for five minutes, girl? From here on out, you mull over the plan and nothing else!' _Popping her knuckles, Brosca gave a curt nod… then gleefully cracked the rabbit carcass, and ripped two full lines of ribs out of its meat. _'Wardens must earn their riches somewhere. Digging up archdemon lairs, probably. Hah! Swell. Shouldn't be too hard to fill me pockets, anyway – what with all the darkspawn-killing going on. Take me about… a year, maybe, to gather up what I'd need. That's a good estimate,' _the girl decided, her deft fingers plucking a few bony stragglers out of the poor bunny's flanks. (A lot like furry nug pups, really… hopefully a wee taste of home?) _'From there it's kiddy work. I'll get in touch with one of the old boys… Kagreth, maybe. See about running Rica and Ma' up to the surface. Set them up somewhere nice and warm… well.' _Annie-Lynn snorted out a mean laugh. _'If the bleedin' whiskey tank's still alive, anyway.'_

If only Mother could've seen her now, bounding around beneath the sky with a gaggle of human men in tow. She'd have been dumbstruck, that drunk old bat. Rica was the only one who ever believed Annie'd make something of herself beyond a street-sweeper or some carta thumb-breaker. Leske – well, if Leske had any idea, really – he would've eaten his britches.

To tell true, the dwarf would've relished her old boss's face once he heard that good-for-nothing Brosca brat had graduated his pathetic band of thugs and was now running orders for a Gray Warden. Beraht couldn't have a reaction, unfortunately… partially because the yellow-toothed sot was too damn proud for surprise, but mostly because he was dead. Hah-hah! Fat little cave-tick was rubbin' knuckles with his ancestors!

"Annie. Annie? Would you join us, please? We were just about to discuss strategy."

It was Sir Jory's crisp, overly-polite voice that interrupted her moment of humor. Annie-Lynn had quickly decided she didn't particularly care for the dumb-looking ox of a man – not due to any legit reason, really – besides him having this general air of idiocy that provoked her contempt. Those wide, shell-shocked eyes set deeply into an oblong head, bare as the day he was born… they were features that simply riled her. Something about the upright way he went about business smacked of falseness.

Sighing, Annie wiped her stained gloves onto some leaves, and stood with a hunk of meat in each hand. "Uh-huh. I'm coming, all right?"

With that, the coal-eyed little dwarf crunched her way across their campsite, leather boots shuffling up dried leaves, both fists banging together for warmth. Jory flashed her a particularly cool look when she slid around him, making to sit herself down on a short stump opposite the resident Redcliffe knight. "Got ants crawled half-way up your knickers, I swear," Annie groused. She grabbed a couple sturdy sticks with which to spear the waiting meat, trundled merrily towards her makeshift chair, then punched a lazy leather boot off its ridge. "Get your ogre-sized foot out of my seat, Daveth."

Unlike Jory, Annie-Lynn and the Denerim pickpocket had connected immediately and unreservedly in friendship. She wandered up to Daveth whilst he'd been stumbling into the thick of some atrocious pick-up schpeel, took one look at the blonde-haired soldier recipient's glower, and burst into high-pitched hyena cackles. Stone take her, but it was unavoidable! The man was grinning like an alley cat sidling up to a homeward-bound fisherman; all teeth and twitching whiskers. Having only recently been acquainted with humans, the dwarf was a bit nervous he'd react badly – but reliably rogue, Daveth was giggling along with her in a heartbeat. His estranged lady acquaintance scowled righteously at both of them before stomping off, fists in her pockets… leaving behind the two red-faced scoundrels to laugh into their palms and make belittling comments about Miss King's Army's hindquarters. And such was the beginning of a newfound camaraderie.

Preachy Sir Jory was a royal annoyance, Daveth with his sidelong grin was a lighthearted familiar, but that Warden… him, Annie wasn't too sure about. Blonde as a fine pale ale and fidgety, to boot. He was a fellow that at one moment seemed perfectly chipper, eager to crack wise; but at the next, strung his nerves up and started shooting everyone questioning glances. Oh, this Alistair bloke seemed all right, the dwarf supposed. But nevertheless, Annie-Lynn decided he _'tweaks me a bit, that one… 'cuz, well. I figured him pegged as the typical bloomin' moron.' _And it hadn't been meanness leading her to such a first impression, either! The boy just seemed simple – not unpleasantly so – but in an easy, comfortable manner common to shepherds or footmen.

Had a nice arse behind him, though. 'Specially since Annie just spent a full afternoon tromping through the Wilds after the man, roundabout eyelevel with it.

"Oi, stumpy. Your dinner's drooping into the embers."

Annie-Lynn quite audibly hissed at Daveth. Despite the dwarf's defensiveness, however, she still flipped over her roasting meal. True to his warning, an edge had dipped too low and been blackened by ash. Ah, well. It'd brush away or cook off, and no self-respecting duster would pitch out a good slice of meat on account of a little burn. In fact, Annie rather liked that subtle singe taste. Helped to distract her from how soured the Brosca family's usual fare was by the time it hit her belly.

"Quit jawin' at me, mate," she grumbled anyway. Daveth's faux-hurt expression would have been more at place on a street actor. "Can't you see I'm thinkin' over here?"

"Me? Yeah, I can see that easy. Thinkin' about the good warden's bailiffs, from the look of it."

Annie startled up, realized she'd been absently staring through their fire (and roughly in the direction of Alistair's codpiece), and promptly hucked a stone for the rogue's head.

Daveth ducked the projectile and came up guffawing into his bracer. The dwarf stuck her tongue out at him. "Ah, get a gander of that. He's lying like a day in court," she snorted, rolling her eyes pointedly towards their senior warden. Alistair's uneasy smile conveyed that he probably wasn't apt to trust either one of the vagrants. Never mind if the scruffy human bandit hadn't exactly been telling an untruth – but it was a thrice-damned accident, anyway, and Annie'd swear by that on her deathbed.

Jory gave a short, disapproving sigh.

At any rate, the dwarven rogue was ultimately pleased when a sudden shrill howl in the dark stopped Daveth's laughter sharp. His back racked straight as a Chantry flagpole, brown eyes widened to expose their whites, and an amused Annie didn't miss how the cutpurse scooted imperceptibly closer to her.

"Oooh, hear that?" she teased, voice quaking theatrically. "Sounds like Chasind hounds to me. Led by a barbarian witch-king!" Daveth only glared at her, sniffing disdainfully, but Annie-Lynn sensed his disquiet. The rogue prodded. "What say you, Alistair? Sense any darkspawn hordes about?"

A look of brief confusion followed by sly concern crossed the Warden's face. He made a tension-filled show of contemplating her suggestion. "_Hmm_. Now that you mention it," Alistair mused, tapping his chin. "No, not exactly. It's probably just a werewolf. They're common around these parts, you know."

Daveth's stubbled, sun-dark face suddenly bleached the color of Antivan sand. His sharp look flickered from Annie to Alistair and back once or twice. "Aw, come off it. You're leading me on!" the thief announced, more to himself than anyone else in their coterie. When Annie-Lynn let out her own whooping cry, however, Daveth spooked so quickly that all three of his fellows teetered into laughter. Another well-placed yowl, and the dwarf thought she might send that poor boy right up a tree.

"All right, all right. Let's leave 'im well enough alone before the young man soils his small clothes," was her merciful order. Annie couldn't resist one last snort, though – not when Daveth shot her such a scathing, victimized glare. She patted the rogue's knee. "Sorry, laddy. My most honest apologies."

He damn near knocked her meal straight in the pyre as payback, but Brosca's stick withdrew faster than her nemesis could strike. The meat was just beginning to look bronzed enough to eat – unseasoned, of course, but Annie-Lynn could never complain when she had a full belly. Too often, she and Rica were left to split a stale slab of flatbread that made both sicker than it did well-nourished.

She twirled the poker about, judged her steak done, and strong teeth tore off a bite. It was tough, gamey fare, but reasonably palatable. Besides, the group was already repulsed enough – after cutting down darkspawn and squeezing out three vials of their brackish blood – that closely examining dwarven cooking skills seemed like foolishness.

Annie-Lynn chewed on the gristly cheekful, rendered temporarily incapable of any further teasing. Instead, she sat quietly, an idle finger flicking at her left ear. There was a scar wrapped around its lobe, just there – a token leftover from years ago, back when she and Leske had been running as kids. They'd had a smooth routine worked out: Annie would mosey over to an unsuspecting trading tent, all chubby cheeks and grubby fingers, with the sole purpose of pestering its owner mindless. Meanwhile, her partner-in-crime snuck around back and bagged as much merchandise as could fit in his pockets. Of course, this plan failed often as it succeeded… but they were usually fleet enough to escape before anyone called the guards.

Save that one time, though – that one time when Yursen, the potter, uncovered their act. Rather than bother with laws that did not pertain to residents of Dust Town, he simply snatched up a tack in one hand and Annie's ear in the other, crashing her cheekbone into his wooden counter and driving the rusty old thing straight through. She let out a scream to wake the whole damn Aeducan line from their precious Stone.

The girl had felt more terror than pain, truly – even to this day, she didn't want to guess at what sort of punishment a wronged trader might've dreamed up for some rubbish brand urchin who tried to rob him. As it was, though, Leske had come dashing back at her cries for help, hopped onto the stand, and punched that withering craftsman so hard to the face he spit teeth.

Probably sold them for silver afterwards, too, the money-grubbing bastard.

"Should we not be discussing something more productive – such as our battle tactics?" Jory suggested, a smidgen put-off by their antics. Before the knight could elaborate, however, there sounded a sodden, bony crack; he grimaced at the wolfish way Annie was tearing into her food. Dust Town's ruling carta hadn't considered etiquette training one of their top priorities… but then again, apparently neither had the Chantry. After all, the way Alistair was currently gnawing on a femur reminded him of a beaver. A large, relatively hairless, sword-toting beaver carrying the archdemon's taint. Poor rabbits never stood a chance.

The pickpocket snorted, eager to save face after serving as their group's last victim. Daveth's mocking grin bared his own canines in the lapsing firelight. "And precisely what 'battle tactics' are these, ser knight? The ones where you start tremblin' in your wee little boots every time someone says the word' darkspawn'… or perhaps you meant that special talent you've got for throwing your bulky mass in front of a spear, then stumblin' about with that confused look on yer' mug – wondering why you're bleeding all over the place?" (Annie-Lynn tittered her amusement; but the Gray Warden, at least, looked a little sympathetic towards a besieged Jory's plight.)

"Lay off him, Daveth. Else I'll call the Chasind back," Alistair threatened, gesturing at both of them with his half-mutilated leg of meat. The rogue wrinkled his nose in protest, but nevertheless quieted down immediately.

Annie could have flung out one hell of a _coup de grâce_ jab, but stalled at a minute tug on her heartstrings. She, too, had recently come to experience such foolish terror – when first stepping past Orzammar's gates and into the naked surface. Of course, the girl had been prepared by at least a rudimentary knowledge of what should be expected when venturing above ground; she wasn't some slack-jawed fluff who feared "tumbling up," as it were. Once those heavily gilded doors swung open, though… once cold air hit her lungs, the ceiling stretched wide, and walls plunged to openness in every direction… well, Annie-Lynn simply reacted. She had frozen stiff as a paragon statue lining the halls behind her, gaped, then quite literally hurled herself at Duncan and grappled onto his shin for a good fifteen minutes. The old Gray Warden had laughed, bless that human's scraggly beard – and it took him countless words of encouragement to pry the chattering dwarf off and back onto her own feet.

When her attentions returned to their fireside strategizing, Annie-Lynn saw that Alistair had humored Jory's request and was explaining where he expected to find these supposed documents Duncan sent them after. "There's not really all that much to it, beyond that," the Gray Warden was sighing, rolling up a well-creased and grease-stained map. "I don't guess we'll encounter heavy resistance – to my knowledge, no one really knows about this cache – especially not the darkspawn. Can't imagine they're much for reading, anyway. Really, the hard part of this whole test is already over. I'm expecting tomorrow to be…"

"Cake," Annie capped for him, happily bouncing on her tree stump. Alistair hesitated, then smiled.

"Cake," he agreed.

With that omen, they buried any remaining scraps, drowned the fire, and bunked down.

Annie-Lynn Brosca slept like a baby.


	2. Homeward

**Homeward**

Annie-Lynn had only realized she'd been devouring her fingernails for the past hour when – starting at Sten's heels, tromping forward along an ice-coated Frostback path – sharp dwarf teeth went for another bite and came away empty.

The girl blinked, glanced down at her hands, and was dumbly surprised to find each finger chewed down to a pink, impotent stump. Ridges had been mowed halfway down to their lunulas; cuticles had been ripped away to bare, bleeding patches. _'Huh. Would you look at that?' _she wondered, rolling up a fist to exaggerate the damage. Manicures never stood as a high priority on any self-respecting duster's list, of course – hells, hers were broken off most of the time – but this was a bit extreme, even for a Warden. It hadn't hurt, really… well, not enough to curtail the dual-assault of nerves and incisors, at least.

In lieu of any nails, Annie took a fistful of the ridiculous wool scarf Leliana had knitted and stuffed it into her mouth. The dwarf's pupils were the size of coal mines.

Orzammar was three miles off, over a winding dragon's-spine turn, then roughly two-hundred steps away.

Annie-Lynn needn't have asked Morrigan to scry the exact distance for her – she'd committed this long, panting walk to memory like the fastest route from Beraht's den to her latest shadowy hideaway. Good thing, too, because that fork-tongued woman was a witch in more than the literal way. Something about Flemeth's so-called daughter lifted neck hairs; whether it was the wild, snake-red paint elongating both yellow eyes or the seething python apparent in her voice. Alistair, for one, spent his time watching Morrigan with a narrowed look; like a mare warding off stray dogs. (The image fit, too. To picture that hellcat masquerading as a wolf bitch – loping on all fours, neck sloped low between her shoulder blades, weaving in the tall grass just out of arm's reach…)

Well, Annie was plumb afraid of her. Dear old Daveth – rest that lad's tarnished, side-a-ways soul – had been wiser than he'd led on.

Fortunately, our heroine's boots didn't rely on any supernatural guidance as they ploughed on through the mountain trail this morning. As any good dwarf could tell you, magic just made things unnecessarily easy. There was that – and the fact that, in an effort to keep herself from staring up until she dizzily keeled over, Annie-Lynn had spent the first leg of her trek to Ostagar counting paces. Belly-sick as she was (with both agoraphobia and excitement in equal measures), the girl felt her shoulders lighten with every step away from that violent squalor affectionately titled "Dust Town". Nobles might have barked and condemned their weak surface brethren for failing ancient customs… but by the paragons' hairy knees, there was nothing in all Orzammar for a casteless but to escape it. Even the air above ground tasted sweet; every breath so full of oxygen that one began to feel their lungs were filling with sugared water.

Annie closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and spent the next several minutes coughing out the forgotten scarf.

It just didn't seem right – finally breaking free of that god-awful place, only to return with a handful of documents and surfacer pleas.

"Annie-Lynn – are you all right, dear?" Leliana asked, pausing for a moment to place one delicate hand upon her friend's shoulder and take knee. The bard always leveled their height difference when talking to her dwarven companion – a gesture the latter appreciated to no end. Unfortunately, she also insisted on using the youngest Brosca's full name – which normally would not have bothered Annie so, had it not eventually begun sounding more and more like a tease.

The rogue eventually confronted carrot-top about it, too. Leliana earned points when she swore it had nothing to do with mocking, and testified to having only the highest respects for Ferelden's littlest Gray Warden. She them promptly lost them again… unable to resist pointing out that "Annie-Lynn" was simply so _darling_.

"_M'fa s' dun' wrmf_," said Annie. Leliana frowned, pulled the spittle-soaked scarf out of her friend's mouth, and waited for clarification. "I said, _'I'm fine, so don't worry,'" _the girl managed to choke out, grimacing when the taste of old socks was replaced by brisk highland air. (Thank the Maker they were not Alistair's old socks, though, which reeked to heaven and back thrice over every time he pulled off both heavy battle boots. When Wynne raised sponge-and-bucket in hand with declarations of bathing their troupe's faithful mabari, Annie-Lynn suggested that while she was at it, the mage also ought to douse her senior Gray Warden.) "Branka's buckteeth, what did you knit this thing out of? Dragon fur?" The dwarf stuck out her tongue, proceeding to pluck away several stray tufts of lint.

"Dragons don't have fur, Annie," Alistair chimed in. It was just the appropriate comment to win him a rocky snowball to the back of the head.

"Of course I knew that, ye' great lummox." This lie was mumbled out between irritated scrapes at her back molar. There was a flimsy bit of fabric wedged between two rear teeth, and it utterly refused to budge; clumsy dwarf fingers were making poor work of dislodging the maddening stowaway. Sod it – but Annie sure wished she would've left her poor nails well enough alone. _'Ah, well. Hindsight, and all that.'_

The Warden rubbed at his neck, brushing any stray traces of snow off silver puldrons that had long ago fogged over. Chainmail links stiffened into a crunchy sheet beneath them. To tell true, this altitude had their good old boy a bit winded. "Sunshine" – as a mean-spirited Anne-Lynn had taken to calling her lamentably blonde superior (in honor of his remarkable ability to point out snide silver-linings in every instance, including impending darkspawn hordes) – had been huffing and puffing halfway up the mountainside, putting his best soldier foot forward. He'd therefore been forced to squeeze in any sarcastic commentary during group rests, which thus far came few and far between.

This in mind – it seemed oddly fitting that, even when indignant, Alistair's face was nevertheless beet red in the frost-laden wind. "What was that for?" he demanded, bottom lip ripening into a pout. "I'm just saying – they have scales! It's a fact."

"I find your persistent bickering to be most annoying. Is this also a fact?" asked an unmistakable monotone from the path ahead. Sten, shoulders hiked up to his gray and tapered ears, refused to grant them the satisfaction of a scolding glance. Still, Annie could hear the thinly-veiled irritation in his rumbling bass. It was the tone he usually had whenever some pressing matter forced him to speak their leader apparent.

Brosca knew that otherworldly warrior would gladly punt her over the tree-line if he believed it was at all conceivable to get away with such a brazen act. Ever since Annie-Lynn, fed-up, spent an entire evening glowering cross-armed back up at him, she knew any chances there might've been of befriending that big lug had dissolved. No great loss, though. It had given Leliana and Alistair quite the hour of hand-muffled giggles; and, at the very least, might've unnerved her target a tiny bit.

After all this time, the qunari still seemed impossible to like – just as one couldn't cozy up to a brick wall, fond feelings for Sten of the Beresaad were wholly diverted by the unparticular scowl he always wore. And, to be brutally honest (as was Annie's forte)… _'it didn't help much that hulking house of a brute was so bleedin' ugly!' _She'd joked once to Alistair that their foreign conscriptee was the result of mating between a tusked boar and a hurlock's backside.

But, as the youngest Brosca found after being whipped in the face with snow for what seemed like an age, he made an excellent wind-shield.

"Are you sure you are feeling well, Annie-Lynn? We can rest if you'd like it," Leliana was saying, fingers tightening warmly on the rogue's shoulder. Her other be-ringed hand set to straightening out the knot of scarf. It was a dreadful, gaudy-looking yellow thing – with pastel blue polka-dots and embroidering that looked like an attempt at flowers – but Brosca didn't quite have it in her to mock the Sister. (Not because of a silly little religious title like 'Sister', of course… but more so because Leliana was reminiscent of Rica in more than a few ways. Flightier and no doubt stranger – yet there remained an intangible hope in both women that hardship failed to extinguish.) "I certainly wouldn't mind, and I'm sure Alistair won't object."

"You can bet your most ridiculous pair of shoes I won't," the Warden shot out, relief dashing through his eyes. "Just a minute, maybe? I've got this… this awful _pebble_ in my boot and it's been gouging me all the way since Soldier's Peak. And, oh – by the way," Alistair added, already balancing poorly against a tree whilst he set to tugging on his iron-clad soles. They had all but suctioned to the man's calves, by now. "You wouldn't happen to have any extra socks on you, Annie? Leliana? No? Well, ah… can we split yours, you think?"

The pleading look on that boy's face nearly cracked Brosca right down her side, had she only been in a better mood. "You want to share socks?" Leliana dared to ask, face scrunching in mild disgust intermixed with horror at this prospect.

"Er… yes," he insisted, preparing an impending whine. (_'But a very strong, masculine whine,' _or so Alistair had once stated in his defense.) "Mine are _sloshy_, and… and cold. And I might get frostbite, which means they'll turn all black and stony. And Wynne will have to cut them off, but she won't have the stomach for it – so Zevran will probably be left with the task, and he'd like it too much – and then…"

"Your toes are not going to freeze." Sten severed the forecast of doom and complaints with a gruff snort. "Moisture is actively condensing into snow, which means the temperature is not nearly cold enough here. And walking keeps the blood flowing, not idle rests."

Alistair scowled with righteous fury at the qunari's compassionless back.

"Do not mind them, my friend," Leliana said, clucking her tongue in both males' direction. She wrapped and tied the scarf around Annie's neck again. "If you want to stop for a moment, then we shall."

Sometimes, the dwarf felt as though their bard companion saw her short stature as grounds to start mothering. Then again, that wistful, loopy human had a strange way of spraying saccharine whichever way she turned. Leliana would show a growling genlock assassin with a strip of her oozing hide still in its teeth mercy, if she could only find some way to communicate with the poor monster. Sympathy was simply this woman's nature... yes, even pretty and elf-thin as she was. Rica would heartily approve.

And – albeit that she might cut your tongue out for suggesting so – Annie never said she didn't like a bit of mothering now and then.

(The accent was a bit much, though. Sometimes she, Blondie and Knife-Ears wondered if their romantic Orlesian minstrel was faking it.)

"Nah, no. Honest, I'd rather keep on." The rogue banged both fists together, breathing into them for warmth. She combed a frizzled length of raven hair behind one ear merrily enough. But her eyes were dark, like Aztec jewels; their whites glossed over with a cold, luminous film. "The sooner we get there, aye?"

Leliana tilted her head, sulked a bit at Annie for keeping secrets, then stood up and hiked on.

The girl might not have spilled her pumping heart out onto the white Frostback slush, but she hadn't been lying. For all the dread a duster felt to be tramping back into that hell-hole – for all the anxiety, old pains, all the unforgotten pangs of hunger and poorly-healed broken bones – Orzammar was where Rica was. Orzammar was where Leske sliced purses and charmed himself a harem; Orzammar was where Ma' filled and guzzled her ale cups. Orzammar, damn it all, was where she'd shoved a rusty kitchen knife through Beraht's jugular vein and watched him gasp on the tile like a suffocating carp, taking quiet delights with every spatter of cruor and incomplete scream.

Orzammar – retching, roiling pit that it was; with every inch of unforgiving stone, bad blood, and malice; sprawling, ancient, and malodorous – was home. And Annie-Lynn Brosca would shave her head, strip her armor, and join the bleeding Circle before she'd let some cave tick's blush-wearing bitch scare her out.

'_Well, Dust Town – here's hoping you've rolled out the welcome wagon,' _she thought, forced a nauseated little grin, and shuffled onwards through the mire.


	3. Mad Dash

**Mad Dash**

The bridge was coming down.

It was a dreadful, crumbling old thing, really – in accordance with most of this ancient fort that Ferelden's Gray Wardens had holed up in, reigning back their dogs and arrows like some form of great siege beast. Limestone etching years ago began to sift away, a victim of slow attrition. Heavy rails soon dissolved, naked beneath the sun and slick malaise of rain. It was much later that these gaping dents yawned into being, however; impressive chunks of bleached rock forfeiting their hold, plunging towards the ground, beleaguered by time as they had perhaps once been cannons. Really – and this was a dwarf's opinion on stone, mind you, so take the statement for its full worth – it was a bloomin' miracle the dilapidated overpass had lasted this long.

Annie-Lynn remembered crossing it for the first time, blinking after Duncan's back without half-a-clue what he expected of her. An idle duster never failed to root out trouble, after all… but Brosca, head still reeling after weeks under open sky, found she could do little but wander laggingly behind him – transfixed by her own hoary reflection in the master's tarnished iron armor. The normally springy rogue had placed her hand upon a sadly deteriorating carving, unable to decipher what the elegant hieroglyph had once belonged to, tracing its ghostly remnants towards the king's camp. It could have been a drake's neck, perhaps – maybe a swirl of water – or possibly a long, uncoiling snake.

The bridge was hulking, primordial; a tottering, withered titan retching for its last taste of air. And it was coming down.

Annie was roundabout in the center when this occurred.

Tiny leather boots skidded to a stop when the shadow passed overhead – a spot of dark from a molten hunk of catapult rock – and their owner let out one crisp, well-enunciated: "HOLY BLEEDIN'-"

That was before the boulder hit, taking with it three moss-laden pillars, a full archer unit, and the block Annie-Lynn Brosca had been standing on.

The next several moments were a fast-paced, dizzying whirlpool of color and horrible sounds. Rock scraped deep gashes into rock, bones splintered, men screamed as their fragile bodies were pounded into a stocky red pulp. Stragglers were suspended in mere seconds of weightless pandemonium when the ground plummeted away from their feet. Century-old fir trees stretched needled arms upward in an unrewarded effort to catch those who would soon come tumbling down.

The screech that forced past Annie's lips seemed as though it had burst from some external source; it brought her back to the gurgles of asphyxiated nugs during their local slaughterhouse's strangling hour. But the next instant, she went deaf. Her fingers, adrenaline-numb, grasped blindly for anything solid. She remembered – somewhere in the haze of it all – watching a soldier hewed in two, fighting to stay above the fault line, fumbling with a pair of arms that were no longer attached. The impact-stunned dwarf saw both hands splay out before her, sure as Stone… yet for some strange reason, could not help but distantly wonder whether or not every limb was still holding fast. Sensation extended only as far as her skittering heart.

Though panic dulled Annie's senses like a hammer-hit to the breastplate, she immediately realized death had not yet come. The mighty bridge had been left bleeding; its middle viciously bludgeoned open to reveal a large, toothy maw. A good quarter of the king's army stationed here now lay wiped out in one fell swoop. Dust – a whirling, stinging cloud; thick and fast as locusts – clogged all surviving faces, bogging down every lung. Breathing was like trying to filter oxygen out of bubbling tar.

But Annie – little Annie-Lynn Brosca, fatherless dwarf and junior Gray Warden – had lived.

Her soot-black hands were sunken into a fat, milk-white root; some eyeless old worm that wrapped itself up a leg of Ostagar decades ago. Ripped though the thing was, she'd been spared because it hung fast to what remained of the bridge's skeleton. Every inch of the girl's bare skin had been plastered with gritty powder, every crevice of armor glued down. Blood tasted spicy on her tongue. She'd broken ribs when an uneven corner of flagstone connected with her side – a digging stomach pain allowed no doubts about this – but the momentum of living didn't leave much room to care.

Annie sucked in a breath, spat out a concoction of scarlet-mud-saliva, and made to hoist herself up before the next projectile hit. Yet there was something troubling – something holding her back.

It was a human man, wide-eyed and shivering, dipping his claws deep into the dwarf's ankle.

Annie felt both palms begin to slip, sweat melting the dust that covered them to grease. She took one last, apologetic look at the soldier's terror-dumb face, then kicked her free heel flat against his forehead. He was too deeply in shock to manage a full scream. The lad gave a surprised, angry choke, gritted his teeth, and fell to death. That was all.

The next thing she knew, Annie was hefting herself over the precipice, dashing past a pile of smoldering rubble and towards the only semi-flattened Alistair. Her senior Warden was currently sprawled out on his back, reeling witless, saved from the fall by about five yards and a clunky (but incredibly helpful) suit of scale. Grunge stained his fair hair a shade blacker than hers; a fine cut had sliced across one high cheekbone, budding infection now perusing it path through the dirt. But the boy was breathing, and this gave Annie-Lynn a nice minty wave of relief. It consoled her a bit less, however, when the girl dashed up to her dazed superior and discovered he also appeared to be… _humming_.

Young Brosca had precisely no idea what it was the ex-templar was attempting to say, either – but it sounded like a tune to some Chantry prayer; one of those cute little sermons taught to chapel-children before bed. Somewhere during all this chaos, he'd given his head quite the commendable whack. Even now she could spot an infant bruise peeking past Alistair's hairline. More alarmingly, though, there were several notable signs emerging that pointed towards concussion (and blaringly so). His lips were fumbling; overloaded synapses misfiring in an effort to make sense. Hazel irises stared up and through her without a single shred of comprehension.

Meanwhile, somewhere very far below, Annie swore there was a slow but audible _clack-clink _of a catapult winding its gears. Besides the thick, wet crackling of her own bones – or Rica's name edging sexily past Beraht's bulbous lips – it was the absolute worst sound in all Ferelden.

She dug her nails into the man's chain-link, screamed his name thrice, and gave both broad shoulders an urgent series of shakes. When that didn't work, however, the girl simply reared back and punched Alistair straight in his square-shaped jaw.

And a small light – dim, but commendably steadfast – clicked on.

"What the-? ANNIE," he cried, a smudged hand leaping to rub out this new flower of pain that bloomed across his chin. It took several moments of wild confusion before the man would trail off, blinking, as the present state of things opened its arms to him. For now, his speech was limited to a list of outraged demands. "You _hit_ me-! Why in the blazes would you-?! I mean how… how _dare_-!"

Lo, a handbreadth before Alistair could explain what it was this brazen new recruit had so dared, the wave of bewilderment ran rice-cake dry. "Oh – oh, MAKER," the warrior sputtered out, bottom jowl swinging open. "We have to get out of here!"

So sayeth the sage and mighty Gray Warden.

Before she could protest – not that a short-legged, small-striding dwarven rogue had any business doing so – Alistair had scrambled up, tossed Annie sidelong under an arm, and dashed towards the Tower of Ishal.

Perhaps it was the horizontal angle, adrenaline draining from tightly-wound muscles, or something she ate for dinner last night – but Annie, cat claws shredding into the Warden's poor forearm – thought on some rather strange things whilst she watched the bridge collapse around them. It seemed like only the most off-color memories distracted her, really; and Brosca would later chuckle at this free-wheeling track of her mind. The girl recalled a poem Sissy recited for her, once – one that, years ago, their giggling childhood selves tried setting to music – metal-shard tambourine, cooking pot-drums and all. She witnessed herself succumb to a more recent impulsive wish, shoveling bites of tasteless snow behind Duncan's back as they hiked down the mountains. She reread a poorly-spelled, yet positively decadent love letter pried from Leske's hands… which, thanks to her fortunate intervention, never reached its recipient. It was the same letter, in fact, that Annie-Lynn later snuck into Jarvia's sock drawer – as signed by, "Yer Sekret Admirer." The dwarf heard Ma' hollering off into a typical three-sheets rant; saw herself effortlessly catch the half-empty bottle lobbed at her, and smiled at that old bat's speechless, empty-headed stare.

For a scatterbrained moment, Annie thought she conjured up a memory of bouncing about as Alistair leaped over the decapitated corpse of an archer – their final hurdle between solid ground and Ostagar's foundering bridge – then skidded to a stop. She believed recalling how the Warden's chest rose and fell in great, equine gusts; how a dull ache lingered within her injured ribcage. And damn it, did she ever remember those damn prickly scales smarting her lady-flesh! _'Someone oughta' be gracious enough to buy this lad a nice, soft set of plate-mail,' _Brosca had thought, feeling an armor shingle prod further into her midsection, scolding herself for such a stupid bit of hindsight.

Nevertheless, it soon occurred to her – swimming mind and all – that this last scene was actually a return-glimpse at reality.

Another instant saw the dwarf plopped belly-flat upon a small patch of grass, wind rightly bumped out of her, and a Gray Warden doubled-over in the backdrops. Ostagar had been robbed of one antique bridge.

'_We lived?'_ Annie wondered, bemused, glancing several times between the buckled ruin and (as it were) her trusty steed. He was panting, hands leaping to his knees, perspiration plinking onto the crunched rectangle of stone. Blood still crept from the shallow cut upon his cheek. It stung, too – cleansed by droplets of natural salt – and one could see pain in the long human face. Yet the man looked otherwise unharmed. And (apart from a litany of bruises and a few cracked ribs) his hardy companion was also in fair sorts, to boot. _'Huh! Well, I'll be a flower-kissin' elf. We lived. Don't that top all?'_

Alas, Alistair was perhaps not the shiniest gem in the quarry. But Annie-Lynn had to hand it to him: the templar could run.


	4. Vintage

**Vintage**

"You know… you really remind me of my Ma'," Annie announced one day, eyeing the vermeil-haired dwarf – her wary look failing to convey whether this observation was meant as an offhand jab or a grudging compliment.

Predictably – and perhaps regretfully – Oghren took it as the former.

"And what is it, exactly, that you're trying to imply – _eh_?" he demanded, lizard-green irises struggling to hone in on Annie-Lynn as she went about setting up a haggard tent. As per his usual, both eyes were glazed over in a viscous film; a strange looking glass made up of liquor, delayed tears, and hay-fever allergens. The man was blooming drunk. There was no need to lean in for a close examination to verify this little fact, either. No, a working nose could smell their berserker compatriot staggering forth from miles off; identified by a hodgepodge aroma of potent dwarven brews. "Are you sayin' I look like a sodding woman, woman?"

Annie pushed a mildly irritated sigh past her front teeth – wondering why in the bleeding hells she hadn't expected this sort of reply from Branka's constantly plastered old lover. The girl stretched out one corner of tarp, pinned it down with her boot's toe, then neatly hammered it into the earth with a wooden stake. "Bah. Forget I said anything, ye' trundlin' boor. You ain't too damn likely to remember it past morning, anyway."

The dwarf's answer was a single, disdainful harrumph. "Brands," he muttered, as though such a mundane statement of fact might've come close to bothering Brosca. The mere thought was a jolly good laugh. Having been called every name in the book by this point in time (and The Book was mighty thick, mind you, scribed double-sided and in teensy font), there was little short of socking her one to the throat that ruffled Annie-Lynn's feathers. _'Even then, it'd have to be a mighty fine hit, too,' _she added, nodding with the durable self-satisfaction that had seen her rise through Dust Town's carta – bleed its kingpin like a stuck, squealing hog – and survive. _'Heh. By now, the humans' flamin' Maker could drop outta' their sky an' I'd scarce wrinkle me dainty 'ickle nose.'_

Besides, it wasn't as if her family's complete lack of honor or lineage hadn't already been burnt upon this woman's right cheekbone. Annie forgot all the childhood that was within her power to purge, but she remembered being eight – remembered creeping in on a teenage Rica, those perfumed hands slick with blood, weeping at the razor halfway hacked into her face. She remembered doubling over, hands-and-knees, to vomit on the floor; still saw the flayed mess of skin sagging limply from Sissy's jaw. And beyond that, Annie remembered the sting of her own cheek when she later woke in Big Sister's arms – young nails having scratched over the sickle-shaped brand a hundred times whilst Rica slept unwitting, raking down to open meat. She carved out an outline of that condemning mark until it became one hideous twirl of burnt tissue, scars, and pink baby flesh.

They never spoke of this incident. The following morning, Sissy had rinsed her sloppy wound with alcohol – bearing its quiet burn as punishment – before tidily bandaging the evidence of a botched removal effort. She tried endlessly to rub a homemade salve upon her sibling's trace-work, as well… but two steps out their rickety door, Annie-Lynn wiped it off.

So many years ago, Rica had made a desperate attempt to rip their city's casteless symbol from her hide. But that same reckless act had sent her little sister out, determined to carry the crude, ugly blight on her face with steel-bending pride. This was more than an unsightly cut. It was Orzammar claiming her. It was a badge; a coat-of-arms for the proletariat dwarven brigadier. It was cool, rough, and wonderfully familiar beneath her fingertips.

Annie loved the goddamn Brand, worshipped it – wore it like a war flag ripping on pikes in the Deep Roads. And had it been _she_ who lost her mark instead, the youngest Brosca would've gladly knifed it right back into place.

The stake she was currently stomping down chose this interval to crack, a thick fracture splintering straight down its middle. Annie-Lynn cussed.

"Sober up for one minute and hand me that bleedin' mallet, would you?" the girl commanded, lips moving awkwardly around two long tent nails held between her teeth. After a few moments of Oghren simply staring, however, Brosca grew impatient. And impatient rogues were almost exclusively snappy rogues. "For cryin' out… well, come on! By the Ancestors' knobby knees," she exasperated, "can't you follow one measly order? I'm not going to soddin' bite you!" (This promise might've been true enough, on its own – but the mabari-like way Annie barked it out clearly caused some doubts.)

The dwarven berserker gingerly picked up a hammer, then tip-toed over like some child approaching their cane-wielding grandfather.

Annie's first blow against the iron tack sent it halfway down through rocky, metamorphic earth.

"Might've told me you were a smith before I went and spent all that money on what's-his-face. In Denerim," Oghren groused at her, watching the girl lay into a second stake. Each draw of her arm was metronomic; muscles extending overhead with unconscious precision, swinging forth tempered clouts against the waiting metal. Suffice it to say – heavy bronze plates and all – he had returned to what seemed like a safe distance before lodging this complaint. "Gorrack or Gorrit… or something like that."

"Smith? I'm a thrice-damned _dwarf_, Oghren," Annie growled, brow furrowing viciously with her resentment of this so-called warrior's stupid observations. She tucked a ramshackle, blackbird tuft of hair back into its poorly-wound braid, loose tendrils adhering to sweat-dabbled temples. "Comes with the territory – which, blimey!" Bullet-like fists leapt to her hips in false enthusiasm, jaw dropped with mocking surprise at 'discovering' their shared heritage. "Maybe you'd realize, if ye' thought to spend one blinking second without a full pint sloshing about in yer' hand."

She made to sink another stake, drove crooked, and swore. Dirt pushed painfully underneath her beagle nails whilst Brosca wrenched it out.

"Scoot," the girl ordered. Her upper lip, now arid and cracked by exposure to these open winds, curled. "You're blockin' out me moonlight."

Oghren squinted. Annie-Lynn couldn't quite decide whether he was shooting her a strained look, or simply trying to puzzle out which of three woozy crow-haired girls was the genuine article. She would've bet silvers on the latter option, though.

The dwarf further supported her theory when, in an opaque-minded attempt to follow instructions, he lurched forward rather than back. Brosca scooped up her small pile of rusted nails on instinct – only later wishing she'd let that oaf trod straight over them. _'Teach 'im a valuable lesson in awareness_…_' _provided this grizzled, liquored-up old dog was indeed capable of learning; what with his beard soaked in stale ale, breath reeking whiskey and failed war stories. Annie doubted it. Whatever the magma-haired husband of Orzammar's young Paragon might've once been had sunk to oblivion years ago – when his wife cast off her laurels, marriage-oaths, and any ratty old ties to humble origins for a crusade into the Deep.

Oghren was most certainly a ratty old tie.

"What're you mumblin' about, now?" she snorted, brows denting. Annie-Lynn shoved a flat-palmed hand against the red steel poleyn that was currently looming dangerously close to her face. "Back off, I said. Oi! Now that's just bloody rude. Don't go stumblin' your smashed, rotten hide away from me 'till I'm good and through with you, duster." Oghren no doubt felt confused; caught between these two commands, afraid to inch one way or the other. The girl was bearing her teeth again… and not in that pleasant, sultry, 'come hither' sort of way, either. He froze – like a dense, corn-fat rabbit caught under a hound.

"I heard that! You got a problem with me, barrel-house, you better up an' say it. What were you jus' grumbling?" Brosca was demanding, bum leaning back on her bent heels. Both the woman's ungloved hands were now covered in a clumpy mixture of Ferelden earth and old grease. Feral-white, they looked strangely unnerving beneath the naked, freckled void overhead. "_What_ did you call me?"

"Didn't call you nothin'. Said 'kin to Branka', I did," Oghren garbled out, biting his muttering tongue. The dwarf's fingers were wringing together, arthritic with unspent energy and drunk-down, unfaced duress. "The way you whack on that hammer – like you're angry at somethin'," he added. "Reminds me of the old bronto, a bit."

Annie, claws and cuspids prepared to shred into the man, was mollified. She felt perhaps a bit guilty, as well, judging from the sudden uncomfortable clench in her solar plexus; a twinge Beraht's old bruiser stomached those late nights after she'd pinched a friend. Oghren was a self-made lout, indubitably… but somewhere beneath the extra belly-fat, spoiled ale, and crude comments, there had once been a respected warrior of House Kondrat. Perhaps she shouldn't have been such a harsh judge. No true dwarf could claim they hadn't sipped one wee tankard too many in their time – particularly the brawlers.

Halfway through this directionless search for justification, Annie tripped to a pause. Her fists clenched and unclenched. Agitation roiled. Round cheeks stiffened awkwardly against their jowls. _'By all the kings' whores…'_

"_Oghren_" rumbled off the rogue's tongue. She gritted eye-teeth down upon his name, and utterly growled it out. "Are you coming onto me?"

The berserker didn't reply. This delay was probably because his mind remained too full of gin, possibly due to sheer speechless regret… but the most likely culprit was a long gander at the short, tightly-packed muscles of Annie-Lynn's thighs.

Good Warden Brosca gracefully stretched forth her arm, batted brush-bristle lashes, and – with an ever-so-feminine flair – flung the hammer square at him.

All in all, the girl was pleased to know her first judgment – "drunken old sot" – had said enough.


	5. Duckling

**Duckling**

Annie-Lynn inched up to the spring's edge, stared down at the reflection of her marble-sized toes, and gave them one apprehensive wriggle.

She was not a Happy Dwarf. Not a happy dwarf, at all.

"What do you mean, 'you can't swim'?" Alistair had asked, squinting an eye at their lip-chewing rogue, face radiating sheer disbelief from his current position in the lake. He had a lilypad sutured to one shoulder and what appeared to be a hunk of muddy grass playing castaway atop short-cropped blonde hair… and yet, bless it all, Warden Brosca had officially lost her brassy high-ground.

She fidgeted with the impossibly itchy bosom-strap, bristling.

"I meant exactly what I said, Big-Nose. And what?" the girl sniffed, indignant, shuffling both feet a millimeter forward. Thick sable locks had been pulled behind low cheekbones, bound tightly in an unskilled braid. She was being perhaps overly careful not to lose her center of gravity and slip face-first into the depths. "Not as though you stumble upon many sodding swimmin' holes in Orzammar, an' the sort. Or did you think 'Dust Town' jus' had a nice, metaphorical-like ring to it?"

"Oh, Annie-Lynn! Are you telling us the truth?" Leliana's lime-colored eyes swelled with the telltale, sugary gloss that only preceded a veritable gush-fit. Her persistent coddling didn't seem to hinder this bard's ability to swim, however; paddling easily chin-and-neck above the murky olive-colored surface, smile glinting starkly off reflected sunlight. Cupped hands propelled her forward through a series of lukewarm wakes. The dwarf was not sure how she kept her boyish hair from sopping up a pound throughout, but any trace of dampness extended only to its gingery ends. "That is _so_ darling! Come, don't be afraid. Swimming is very easy – much more so than it looks! But, ah. I will show you how it's done. You can even hold onto my arm, see?"

Annie skittered away from the approaching minstrel, fingers balling tightly by reflex. She was certainly not about to sink half-naked into a sodden, muddy grave without one hell of a sand-slinging fistfight. "Yeah, I see…" the dwarf answered warily. Both shoulders had hunched to her ears; a cat pumping up its body-mass in attempt to ward off the neighbor's hound. Obsidian irises were searing through Leliana's outstretched palm as though it had a set of gnashing, needle-like teeth. "Now back off before I thump you one but good."

The autumn-hued Orlesian stuck out her bottom lip, pouted, then burst into a light metallic rattle of laughter. Annie rather thought she looked like flitting evil incarnate… or at least someone's loose desire demon, minus those telling lavender scales.

"Now, don't be that way, my friend," she pleaded, sidling up to the rogue like some conniving merfolk ambassador. "You were so close a moment ago… at least dangle your feet in. The water is marvelous!"

Young Brosca's lips stiffened, jaw setting harsh as it bridled up courage. She looked down at the stark, soft flesh of her belly – suspended between the breadth of dwarven hips – exhaled, and shuffled back to the lake's rim. Leliana floated merrily along, grinning quietly; a skinny shark trolling in the undertow. "All right, all right. I'll try it, see?" Annie grumbled, nerves bunched over her spine. The rogue's knotted knees locked snugger with every step that brought them closer to inky, lapping waves. "But doan' rush me!"

This threat was answered by a garrulous Orlesian coo. "That's our brave leader," Leliana sang out past the giggles bubbling up her throat. "If you sink, I will dive down and rescue you – promise!"

Our Brave Leader grunted out a swear.

Alistair, nose wrinkled, had peeled off the leafy circle and was scratching vainly at a fading scrape beneath it he must've mistaken for dirt. The Warden's strokes were longer and less measured by comparison; more athletic. Well… now that he was swimming about properly, which proved quite the recent development. After all, her comrade-in-arms had for the past fifteen minutes apparently been attempting to determine how long he could hold his breath – submerged beneath the cattails until erupting through, sputtering, eyes squeezed shut and fingers clamped over his nose. Each unsatisfactory trial only seemed to nettle him into another inevitable failure.

Annie-Lynn watched this succession of snorting and water-spitting thoughtfully, reaching the conclusion that – if not for one little level-headed Brand – Ferelden's Gray Wardens would have been left to an utter moron. It was a somewhat satisfying realization. _'Well… at least more satisfying than watching Blondie try t' sneak a glimpse down Ana's flimsy under-trews.'_

Unfortunately, any fulfillment the rogue had salvaged from this sopping hellhole of a day was interrupted by sudden movement sweeping very intently behind her. It belonged to a bullion-brown set of long, limber legs that strolled happily past – speeded up imperceptibly in their final few steps – and dove into the spring with a precise, elegant splash.

Also – more notably – they were completely bereft of clothing.

A dainty slew of bubbles beat straw-yellow hair to the surface. Zevran's thick mane identified him before the elf's lithe face did… at least to Annie-Lynn, who had jumped back, infinitely startled by this unexpected blur of movement. She busied herself with directing one lengthy stream of flinching curses to an entire hall of ancestors whilst calculating sylvan eyes peered inches above the water. His nose barely cleared the wakes, pupils glinting enthusiastically from behind plastered-down locks; a jaguar gazing out through sun-bleached forests.

Most of their stalwart group would no doubt attribute this odd behavior to the furl-tongued Crow simply being _"creepy" _(a quote from the ever-articulate Alistair) – but Brosca theorized he'd sunk low to hide a devilish grin. If she pegged that sharp-boned lecher right, it was likely a grin at the Gray Wardens' expense. Like a knife blade glimmering in a rocky brook, there was a slight, but undeniable curl beneath the elf's left cheek.

A pause rifted their congregation… an awkward, drawling, half-breathless stillness – the moment between a politician's closing lines and a crowd's reluctant applause.

"Really, Zevran? _Really_?" Alistair managed to choke out. The human's forehead was neatly dented with _frown_, brows migrating a millimeter from his hairline. He fidgeted; utterly discomfited to the bare, bodily marrow.

Sunshine might have been very deliberately scowling in every direction but downwards… but Annie-Lynn took herself a good, healthy look – as much as the gloomy lakewater allowed. Brimstone eyes traced blacker tattoos, spiriting a wingspan across the canvas of his finely-lined back. The dwarf was not at all inclined to dawdling into a brief romantic dalliance with some chicken-necked elf, ham-fisted exile, or squirmy human prince... but this fact did not mean she would not nevertheless remain an appreciator of superior art. _'Body art, that is.' _Brosca shared a snicker solely with herself.

"…'parently," the girl said, studied her nails, and smirked.

"Maker's breath… this is Ferelden!" Alistair went on to declare, puffing with righteous indignity. He looked every bit the martyr Warden-Commander issuing noble last instructions to his troupe. This mighty tone was therefore somewhat at odds with the squirrel-like swiftness in which Meric's son clambered through rib-high weeds, feet slipping in bank silt, hurrying to place as much distance as was earthly possible between a gleefully unfazed Zevran and himself. "You – you have to wear _pants_, man. You just _have_ to." (Alistair's well-worn tan ones were now dripping unhappily, all but glued to the man's shivering legs. Annie-Lynn expected that at any moment he might start shivering droplets off like a drenched dog.)

The assassin's answer was one very Antivan smile. A well-defined eyebrow formed a most disingenuous, questioning arch. "Are we not bathing?"

"No," Leliana explained, blinking rapidly, her creamery barn voice bewildered and now strangely taut. Annie did well to notice that there was a distinct pinkness rising beneath the normally airy woman's cheeks – for she, unlike their fumbling comrade, had not dashed towards safety at shore. "As a matter of fact, I don't think we were."

"Oh. Well. My mistake, friends," the elf said, as though all had been naught but an innocent misunderstanding. When Zevran emerged, Annie-Lynn was waiting ankle-deep before the steep undertow with her nearby drying blanket. She held it out wordlessly, 'humble' gaze turned on the well-crunched grass – not bothering to swallow any humor rumbling beneath her wind-chapped lips.

To this very awkward moment, Warden Brosca had absolutely no idea why a presumably decorated assassin decided her orders were worth following. He certainly hadn't thought so when a downwards swipe of one fist sent a caravan of mercenaries trudging towards them, irons soaking up the secluded glade's muted sunlight. Perhaps the tidy swathe they'd hacked through these sell-swords had given him pause. Perhaps he had been impressed by the snarl that ripped itself through Annie-Lynn's button-face, twisting her unremarkable dwarven features into something hardhearted and terrible. Or, then again, perhaps it had been the golem's gravelly fist wrapping around a thin elven neck and pummeling him thrice into a ruthless mound of earth.

Wheezing scarlet red, coherent sense of _up vs. down _obliterated, he'd barely grappled his reflexes quick enough to rummage for a hidden dart tucked beneath a fold of belt. Its clumsy gleam had not warded the vengeful Warden off whatsoever. She'd kicked the pithy little thing from his hand brutally enough to crack knuckles, grinding her boot's unforgiving sole into Zevran's gullet. Saliva frothed up at both corners of his lips. Salt liquidated beneath sweltering ducts. Duster that she was, Brosca pushed a cruel steel toe painfully far into the slick, hollow groove of his chin.

And – from this gurgling, coiling position in the dirt; spine rolling like a pinned cottonmouth – the Antivan Crow had blinked up at Annie, then shattered to laughter.

It had distressed her more than a bit. (Positively infuriated the dwarf, really; brought her temperature toasting within a dimly ringing skull) She'd even fobbed Shale off the hilarity-gripped elf, torn a stiletto blade off a nearby corpse, and jabbed it into Zevran's collarbone deep enough to well blood. No quantity of prods, pinches or slaps seemed to knock the damn snickering out of him, however; no heel to the torso snapping his riot like ribs. Annie-Lynn nearly had to gut him immediately on general principle – fate decreeing she take that mocking, masochistic burst of mirth alongside to her grave. Apparently, being killed by a squat dwarven ragamuffin was cause for a little pre-mortem merriment.

Alas, though – when hawking a vicious glob of phlegm in his face didn't shut the giggling, half-cracked cad up – well… what else was left but to join in?

How, exactly, Arainai ended up roasting venison on their fireside that same night remained an unsolved little ambiguity.

"Thank you, my dear," the Crow said with a particular cheer, accepted her towel, and slung it loosely around his waist. He whipped back tousled flaxen hair like tossing a forelock before strutting off, fabric grappling onto the upper ridges of his pelvic bone. Annie's eyes followed Leliana's eyes follow the nonchalant, swaying assassin hips.

Oh, that nancing knife-eared whore.

'_Like a giant, preening peacock, really,'_ or so it occurred to the rogue. Ironically, Brosca ought to have thanked Zevran in earnest – as his little idea of a practical joke did her the valuable favor of distracting Leliana from any further efforts to force their leader into taking a plunge. She was about to make good on the escape, in fact – naked shins already rasping through underbrush – when a sudden and well-placed yelp foiled her.

"M-M-Maker!" Alistair was shrieking, skidding out of the shallows with a foot clenched in his hand and incomplete swears. The Warden's shrill, panicky tone could've splintered a sheet of glass. "I think something bit me!" he cried, neck snapping viciously in a hundred separate directions as it searched for a culprit. Rapid breathing and cool air made his shoulder blades shiver. The man was currently hopping about dry land in a contorted, sadly lopsided C-shape. "A snake bit me!"

Annie supposed she should've been rightfully concerned, but the combined knowledge of Alistair's condition as a chronic overreactor and that uproarious squeaking note to his voice instead compelled her to be snide. "Oh, aye?" the dwarf asked, cocking a thick black brow. "Kindly fling it over here, then – I'll skin n' boil me a fancy new belt."

The look he shot her in return was somewhere between hurt and outraged. It was not, however, poison-bloated or otherwise showing signs of rattlesnake venom.

Leliana had predictably splashed to their bastard heir's would-be rescue, despite Warden Brosca's imminent groan. "Aeducan's right nut," she snapped, watching the bard slosh concernedly over to a whimpering Alistair. "Boy stepped on a gods-damned stick, an' there's yer' end of it!" (The dwarf's expletives failed to take her desired effect. 'Ana was now easing herself under one of Blondie's limp arms, consoling him with _tut_s and sympathetic looks whilst plodding out of the lake. The lad seemed to be enjoying all this attention… or, at least, appreciating his close proximity to a certain spry Orlesian bosom. Both large ears had burnt the color of Redcliffe soil.)

Annie, lifting her hands in defeat, had turned and was preparing to leave this sorry scene behind... at roundabout the precise moment a hulking, slavering mass of muscle, sinew and matted fur barreled into the dwarf with a well-placed: "RUFF!"

Before she'd half the time required for a successful evasion, Brosca found herself being hurtled along by the dumb beast's momentum, limbs flailing. Fusty canine breath was overwhelming. Yellowing, carrion-dinged fangs menaced overhead. Parched grass nipped at bare ankles scraping backwards towards the bank. To top this already impressive list of assailants, however: one massive, jiggling projectile of slobber hit her directly in the face, splattering like buckshot. Of course, Annie was unable to disgustedly wipe it off or even holler at that over-salivating mongrel – acts which would soon prove unnecessary, when she found herself newly-rinsed by a head-over-heels tumble into the waiting lake.

Alistair and Leliana watched on, wide-eyed, as a stream of bubbles trickled ever-so-tranquilly up to the now lapping surface.

Roughly seven uncomfortable seconds later, there was a veritable explosion beneath the once-pleasant little pond. An exuberant mabari head thrust its way into open air, jowls flopping joyously, citrus-colored eyes gleaning like a child who had just escaped its wicked schoolmistress for a blissful taste of freedom. Its colossal, hoof-like paws were treading great, sloshing gusts of water.

A sodden Annie-Lynn was clinging onto the creature for dear life.

"Rotten, stinkin' brute!" the dwarf screeched, a hellcat thrown into Atlantis. Jet hair dribbling sadly down both cheeks, skin pimpled with goose-bumps, Brosca could do little but continue to channel profanity. Broad teeth chattered violently as she helplessly grappled to the burly neck of her faithful hound. "Stupid, tar-breath ogre-addled son of a hulking…" The dog's shoulders dipped low beneath the wakes as he paddled into a turn, filling his mistress's mouth with earthy liquid. She kept on admirably, though – now spitting water alongside her verbal abuse. "Gods damn your reekin' hide, Mutt!"

An insult though she might've once meant, Annie had accidentally dubbed the poor animal "Mutt" – simply by swearing at her rambunctious new companion so many times, it began to respond to this term. She would've remembered to feel a bit guilty over the whole pathetic ordeal, had Warden Brosca not been too otherwise occupied with finding it hilarious. Laughing was a bit difficult at present, however; what with both hands sunk desperately into short-cropped russet fur, an inane terror of drowning the only force preventing the dwarf from boxing a floppy triangular ear. Perhaps this was simply an obscure, mean little expression of Mother Nature's karma.

Both growing tired of bobbing about their swimming hole on top of being an easily distracted personality, Mutt cut his fourth clumsy lap short and veered towards shore, dragging Annie – a sopping, clacking thing – full through the mud. Too afraid of sinking to release the hound, it beached her knee-deep into a sand mound. Alistair and Leliana had long split their sides by this point. The dwarf was now rolling away from her furry buoy like a suffocating porpoise, paper-white belly painted in thick, oily brown.

A matte-finished Brosca lifted her revolted face from the lakeside clay to stare down one large, wet mabari nose.

"Ugh!" the girl cried, both pale forearms thrown up in a futile effort to shield herself from an oncoming onslaught of mud. Killing two birds with one stone (a phrase which Shale never failed to appreciate), Mutt had shaken himself dry and spackled Annie-Lynn in one deft wriggle. Clumps tangled into her hair. Granules of sand stuck to her brow. Somewhere, far at the back of her retracting tongue, there was a pungent flavor of "country spring" seeping into dwarven taste-buds.

She pushed the muzzle out of her face, accepted Alistair's halfway-sympathetic hand, then kicked that giggling blonde twit square in his shin.


	6. Heat Fever

**_CONTENT WARNING_: There's slight deviation from canon, and some historically accurate torture, in this chapter.**

* * *

**Heat Fever**

Annie-Lynn was sick.

Stark, vanguard sunlight split the throat of Fort Drakon's musty dungeon air. It pushed past the cobwebbed window, searing off the complacent widowing spider who slept there, and bored down unhappily upon Brosca's branded face. Horse-hair lashes pressed themselves tighter together in a vain attempt to retaliate against these offensive yellow tendrils. Her boxy jaw clenched, biting back bitter groans. Annie's tongue smacked the dry roof of its home. Alas, these small efforts did not much avail the captive dwarf – and so she lay there, stewing, sweating into a fetid burlap pallet.

When a guard with the face of a mabari pit-fighter and biceps the size of hog shanks had returned Warden Brosca to this cell a half-hour prior, she'd barely had enough leftover bump to demand Alistair shut his gaping fly-catcher. The ex-templar had been visibly derailed by her sallow cheeks and sunken eyes. 'Matter of fact, he spent at least five minutes rattling the iron bars between them, nervously chanting out a stream of impatient "Annie"s – until she wrenched her aching torso upright with the singular intent of hurtling an empty wooden cup at that cawing fool. This action had propelled the rogue into a blood-speckled coughing fit, but (even whilst air _'gluck_'ed through her racking lungs) she decided it had been a worthy sacrifice.

And so, here the two intrepid Grey Wardens were… caged, heavily bruised, and stripped down to nary but their ragged small clothes.

For one week had Annie-Lynn and Alistair scratched out their existence in this putrid jailhouse, and for one week had struggled to keep burbling insides from devouring themselves. Indeed, the spitting, roaring lion of a girl who had first been pitched into this cell could now muster little more for her captors than a low-throated growl. Alistair's spry comments mellowed to only the occasional cautious, halfhearted snub.

Yes, Annie-Lynn was sick. _'Diseased' _felt like a more adequate term, so she thought; swallowing the lumps backed up in her throat whilst Blondie sulked in a shabby cell adjacent. Daylight had been kind as under-worked prison guards, leaving burns upon pale subterranean skin where their fists and sword hilts left rising blood-spots. Her flesh peeled, flaked white. The sun's mordant brightness turned cruel somewhere in that tainted space between grey Ferelden sky and this dejected cage.

Alistair was livid. If it was not enough to be so brusquely impositioned – so humiliated, so cruelly disabled – they compounded insult to injury by leering or jokes. The former applied more so to their female Warden, of course; but Maric's indignant boy nevertheless felt besmirched. Standing there in naught but his skivvies, alternating between shivers and dehydration… barbarism, it was.

They had not even let the poor man keep his bloody _pants_, those _bastards_.

Fortunately, Howe's interrogators had thus far been more intent on roughhousing and general intimidation than mutilating such an important pair of prisoners in earnest. They'd broken one of Alistair's small fingers when he'd hawked a glob of spit at the Arl's particularly lippy quartermaster, and his torso already soaked up two dozen praiseworthy punches to the gut. Apart from that – and so many backhands to the face, it failed to even make him angry – the Warden remained rather remarkably whole. Though his ragged companion was presently far more concerned with sleeping than discussing their combined experiences in this tower, the man's observations concluded her treatment included more of the same.

"Maker's breath," Alistair blurted when a large, yellow-toothed ball of greasy fur trotted past his left foot. "Annie-! Did you see the _size_ of that…"

The lad found himself beset with an irrational, passionate terror when Brosca's shoulders remained impeccably still.

It was a spine-raking, alien sensation – this dread that pooled within Alistair's stomach, stiffening his jowls with a burst of sour cold. The once-templar was not afraid of what Ferelden might do with only one Warden to their call; he was afraid of stepping up to this duty without her. Annie was no glib politician; she was certainly no militant officer likely to spout honor past the prize-fighter set of her jaw. The girl was a bruiser – a crass, heavy-handed creature with a penchant for bloody noses and riling dignitaries, impetuous words lisping from her dwarven tongue in that effortless patois of the poor. Of all their blatant mishaps, she never regretted a one; rarely hesitated. Solutions were found by the continual raising of hell, for Brosca – unlike Duncan's straw-haired protégé – feared no high-collared man's rebuff and censored even less. 'Impropriety' was simply not a concept that occurred to the steel-tipped young woman.

Whatever would he do without her?

How, for love of the Maker, would he dare these decisions on his own; control their collateral? For this, it was not the constant threat of death that so frightened him. It was the responsibility of the thing – the lingering wakes that branched around a Warden's word and snaked their tendrils muddy miles across Thedas. Weak-kneed though it might've been, the ability to share any potential blame did leagues for his ability to make choices.

"_Annie_," Alistair said again, syrupy name hoarsened by alarm. He breathed a great gust of relief when the thief irritably plugged both ears, burrowing into her threadbare mat as best she could manage. Every sound, every scrape prickled through the confines of Warden Brosca's throbbing head – a gradual swell that taxed her churning stomach and threatened to crack molars. The cacophony grew until Annie felt as though it would burst out upon sweaty tarp.

_Sweat._ Her tattered small clothes were soaked in it, flimsy garments stained with hardening soot. Hair like a blackberry bush had lost its unkempt volume and instead hung in snarled tangles. In all honesty, Annie could not begin to recall when she'd last enjoyed the advantage of a bath, and this new sense of repulsion at something so trifling as hygiene seemed strange as it was disquieting. She smelled septic – like a morgue.

Annie-Lynn Brosca was sick. And Alistair had no inkling of what to do next.

'_Selfish,'_ they'd called the bastard-prince, fearing the crown at his feet in lieu of a blade. _'Childish.'_ The truth of it was that Alistair would sooner march in a front-line against the Blight than shoulder an entire country's welfare. Maric was less of a father than a distant face fizzling through the blue miasma of Fade. Maker save them, cowards all… but the late monarch's own son could not make himself care a measly whit whether or not his sire's people judged him an embarrassment.

Annie had said it best, hadn't she – conveyed the thoughts of an entire nation in one flabbergasted, ridiculous laugh barking past her teeth? _"Break me buttons n' broil me britches," _the girl had sniggered, incisors sinking into the jiggling lip beneath. Half the room's occupants were struggling to determine if Eamon had simply been joking. Redcliffe's knights exchanged nervous glances, shifting uncomfortably, whilst young Warden Brosca choked on her grin and delivered the paled ex-templar a swat on his thigh. _"You're jerkin' my chain. His Majesty Lord Alistair! Ye gods-on-high. Yer boy Connor'd fare a better king with a noggin' full o' psychotic demon wench..."_

When the arl's only response was a humorless stare, bearded mouth tightening its wrinkles, Maric's inheritor felt _silence_ like a mule's kick to his gut. Giggles crumbled to a stalled, wagging, semi-horrified gape. Ser Perth's patiently folded hands started wringing themselves behind his silver wall of a back. Somewhere outside – far removed from this sullen little congregation – Alistair swore he heard a lowing, stupid '_moo_'.

Annie's answering wheeze had sounded remarkably like a deflating balloon.

He would not have been angry, even if the man had at that moment possessed enough mental constraint for any emotion but unadulterated horror. Their leader always spoke as such, either unwitting or uncaring as to how offensive her opinions might've been. And – much as the legit nobility decried it; burned scarlet over what court society deigned indecent behavior for someone of Brosca's military stature – this was only what a war-besieged continent most needed. She owed their human world neither poetry nor pretty oaths.

Perhaps it was inaccurate to deem the rogue a hero, for this was a characteristic that intrinsically contradicted her profession. In the scope of it all, Annie indeed did not do a great deal of intentional 'saving' – not of this earth or her companions. The scoundrel simply survived; soldiered on. She defied.

Andraste well knew Brosca didn't coddle _him_, and this was perhaps one of the main reasons Alistair appreciated the curt little Warden so. She might've harped, sneered, and rolled eyes the color of mine-shafts – why, the girl poked merciless fun at his expense more often than anything else – but it was through these little jabs that Annie-Lynn endeared herself to Ferelden's heir. Her constant jokes might've proved small comforts to anyone else, worth a laugh and potential scolding… but to Alistair, they were a lifeline. Every jolly punch, snort, or well-placed and wholly inappropriate innuendo seemed to make all this _smaller_, somehow.

The human Warden's musings were soon replaced with a more pertinent concern: starving. A particularly loud complaint issued from somewhere within his abdominal region spurred the man's ribcage in that moment, reflexively met by one open hand. Scolding fingers dug into his gut. While foul scents and smarting muscle pains could be ignored, the gurgling of his stomach refused to permit Alistair forget he had not eaten a sturdy ration in these past six days. Skin hung loosely from calcium foundations, both their bellies swollen with hunger. A musty blade of filtered daylight shimmed down the curved back of Annie's lowest rib.

Howe hadn't been altogether interested in her. He'd seen much more to gain by menacing the direct descendant of his master Loghain's own late lord. This notion might very well have been true, at that – for a casteless dwarf knew less of surface politics than the serf elves remembered their wild cousins – but with one week passed and Alistair's apparent ignorance, Denerim's new arl decided the junior Warden was mayhap worth a bit of attention. He'd ordered Annie-Lynn cuffed, marched from the cell she'd languored in, and lead down ungainly stairs into his torch-lit processing chamber. She recalled how their chief interrogator, a vulpine man with a flat boxer's nose, had laughed at the sight of a shivering yellow 'half-woman' whose crown nearly met eyelevel with his hipbones.

He'd stopped laughing roundabout when blunt dwarven teeth sunk halfway through his quartermaster's middle finger. Then, Howe had Annie-Lynn muzzled like a blood-mad dog.

They'd strapped Warden Brosca unweighted to a dull-edged Judas chair, fat wooden spokes rooting bruises into the undersides of her thighs until tender flesh morphed a jaundiced, bile yellow. The natural distribution of fats and meat upon her woman's body leant hardest towards its rump, one row of triangular prongs grinding raw holes into the skin of a left buttock. Had the torturer done so much as drop a chantry bible atop both those knotty bare knees, she was certain blood would paint that hideous timber seat.

Another second, and they had rolled the elf in – aye, _rolled_ that poor naked son-of-a-bitch like a rotting, snake-infested log – before closing his temples in a capped iron vise. Their prisoner, if that was truly what he'd been, did not resist; nerves swathed in the anesthetized lock of impending death, the knowing carcass taking pity upon its panicking brain. He had red hair, she saw – magma-colored, like the freckles spotting a summer child's face. Then a guard flipped crude metal cups over those swimming toddler's eyes, and the boy saw nothing more at all.

Filthy as the cartel had become – as badly as her own fingers broke ribs, slit noses or twisted out roiling tongues – Brosca knew she could not witness what would transpire in that dingy, dripping corridor. Howe's jail master had, affection limning his kitchen-clear voice, referred to the device as a "head-crusher." With this sufficing for an explanation, two monstrous thumbs ripped open her eyelids, and the interrogator had made his captive watch.

Annie had always thought she'd been tough. Dust Town berks had to be, particularly those ill-fortuned enough to be born women. So the rogue had stomped through life much as Beraht had taught – lip curled, opportunistic and mean-spirited, aggressively unladylike. Yet it took the space of one puncturing 'pop!' until Warden Brosca felt her stomach seize.

Annie-Lynn knew she was about to be sick. The dwarf had blanched, doubled, and – as though there was any room left for dignity at the hands of one's torturer – yanked back a fork of hair before purging her stomach's contents onto Arl Howe's grimy dungeon floor. She had been tossed from the Chair, pestled flanks screaming their relief, still retching as a vapid servant mopped away the viscera – a ghastly slime of cruor, gray matter, and tooth shards. Warden Brosca felt her like her insides had been scraped by a lead-eaten spoon, emptied; as though the girl's digestive tract had expelled itself upon Fort Drakon's floor.

Then that unsympathetic hawk had turned, signaled to the dwarf with a sociopathic twirl of his wrist, and a steely set of watchman fingers curled around her neck.

Annie had been pushed three wobbling steps forward before she fainted.

They had been bluffing, of course – meaning mostly to scare the Gray Warden, offering a taste of their finale routine. Brosca hated how effective this elaborate threat had been. Though the spasms of her abdominal muscles had ebbed since then, even now she felt that spun-out curdle of nausea bubbling up beneath a convex naval. Annie's hand transformed into a claw tugging at her matted hair.

When Alistair once more tapped on the bars that separated them, a fever-deluded Brosca almost thought she'd been staring down Leske; still trapped in Beraht's reeking prison miles beneath the earth. Fortunately, sunlight and crop-gold hair dissuaded the notion before she'd seriously begun wondering whether or not these past months had all been a bizarre, intricate dream. After all, for Caridin's alabaster backside, _'surely I didn' conjure up th' taste a' medium-rare beef steak.'_

"Annie," Alistair was saying, voice hushed to a conspiratorial whisper. She cracked open a red-hemmed eye at him. "Stay awake over there, Annie. Listen. I'm not so sure I want to wait much longer on the good arl's rescue." The Warden's lips were moving swiftly, fretful; she could see the droplets of anxious spit that dotted them. He had kneeled down, alternating between fiddling with a chipped fragment of flagstone tile and tapping against their cage. "If I know Eamon – which I do – he won't hear of jeopardizing a landsmeet by solving this little predicament through methods outside legal, political channels. It'd be breaking Ferelden's law to storm in here without Denerim's endorsement. And I can't see that looking very peachy in front of a whole crowd of unhappy teyrns. So maybe I should just out with it right now." Annie-Lynn thought this statement rather regrettably obvious, but kept her trap shut for fear foam might belch out of it. The dwarf heeded him; eyes squinted, brow creased.

"I don't know about you, sister…" Alistair chewed his cheek. "But I'd say it's high-town time we thought about getting ourselves out of here."

Ill though she might've been, Brosca wedged an arm beneath her bosom and propped up to stare at the man. "Aye. Perfect planning, Sunshine – only 'ow 'xactly do you plan on us jimmying out of 'ere in one piece? Seeing as you're a gods'-damned Ostagar witness well as a standin' heir, and I'm… well," the girl trailed off. Her blunt nose wrinkled. "I'm bloody unlucky enough to be stuck along with you, ain't I?"

The senior Warden looked strangely optimistic, resting his chin on a bent knee and thinking on this problem before them. He pondered. "Maybe you could seduce one of the guards?"

Annie bared her filmy teeth and hissed at him. Alistair blinked helplessly.

"…maybe _I_ could seduce one of them?" he tried, earning nothing but a choking grunt from the dwarf that sounded suspiciously like a guffaw.

They fell silent when the shadow of a watchman passed overhead, chainmail boots clinking down the corridor.

"Oi! No jabberin' in there!" he barked, unshaven jowls flapping against an offset chin. This particular jailor was a stone's throw older than his comrades, stubble silvering upon age-tan cheeks. "Clam it up. Else I'll come in there an' give ye both a wot'-for! An' don't you even think of sassin' me, squatty. I'll thump your stumpy brainpan so hard your mammy's ears'll ring way down in Orzammar." Burly arms crossed a barrel chest. Judging from the guard's smug expression, he was quite pleased with this outburst of rapier wit.

Annie viciously thrust out her tongue after the man's broad-shouldered back. He caught an unfortunate glimpse of the fleshy pink muscle in one shiny uniform bracer.

"All right, 'den!" came the gruff return bark. "I see you're fixin' for a lil' taste of the ol' left knuckle!" Before Brosca could suck and withdraw, their hefty guard had spun around, metal soles clicking towards her. Her tongue rolled lamely back between puckered lips. The dwarf's lodestone eyes were wide. "Open wide, munchkin! Lemme' have a gander at those pearly whites 'fore I knock a few in on ya'!"

Alistair's "stop!" had been more of a strangled squawk than a prince's command. The jailor whirled on him with a tightly balled fist. "Um. Please, sir. My friend," he explained, this excuse even more crippled than the Warden's faltering tone. Hazel eyes blinked rapidly. "She doesn't mean it. Not very… prudent at the moment, you see. Loopy, really. It's just that… ah. She's _sick_, s' what it is."

"Oh, is _that_ all?" the watchman puffed, cubic head tossing back into a belly-borne laugh. "Heh-heh! Well, I am jus' too sorry to hear that, I am. Deary half-maiden, whatever seems t' be the matter? Do 'pear rather miserable, now that I actually look at ya'." A meaty finger poked through the cell bars and towards Annie-Lynn's blanched face. From the murderous look that flashed through those dark pupils, Alistair wondered if she wasn't considering chomping it plumb off. "Prolly' carryover from the Blight, I 'spect. Got a bit of black blood in those dirty veins, ye' porky little hobbit? Heh! I've seen it b'fore, you know. Darkspawn plague, I mean. First the fever hits… but you two must surely know that, mustn't you?"

Annie neatly plugged up her ear canals as this belligerent guard cheerfully related the graphic stages of darkspawn poisoning, its gory symptoms only semi-embellished by their raconteur. Sweltering heat, at first – then panicked madness – followed by oozing sores, wilting gums, oral decay… She had no real knowledge on how arls went about picking their torturers, but judging from the merriness with which this bloke described the putrefaction of limbs, Warden Brosca could certainly venture a guess.

Caught up with studiously avoiding the narrative, Annie had quite forgotten her migraine when a sweaty fist rapped upon metal. "Hi-ho, in there! You even listenin' to me? Pah. Wasted breath – you've already gone daffy, ain't you?" The watchman snorted at her brief growl – a single, repulsive snicker – before proceeding with renewed enthusiasm. "That's too bad, really. Last thing to die is the mind, they say… your body'll be leakin' oil pus, you'll be a weepin' cannibal, and you're conscious till the end of it all. Sure enough! Why, I bet you'll eat up your dapper lil gentleman-friend, over 'ere!" A thumb jerked in Alistair's direction. The Warden shrunk away from it, wincing, unable to retreat. "_Rip_! _Crunch_! He'll be the first t' go!"

"I swear to yer' soddin' Maker!" Annie snapped, the heels of her palms now pressing insistently into both ears. "If you say one more _word_ to me, you scum-suckin' whoreson, I'll-"

Whatever Annie-Lynn thought she might've conceivably done to the gristly old watchman was cut off when a foot-long stiletto knife rammed itself smartly through his colon.

One very disgusted Leske was attached to the opposite end of it.

Annie's head smacked into the flagstone as she fainted for the second time in her iniquitous little life.


	7. Rattle and Rook

**Rattle and Rook**

Annie watched the silver piece cartwheel into open air above her, trailing its fatty arc of cherry and flesh, before lunging forward with outstretched hands.

There was one half-sucked breath of oxygen, then a strangled gobbling sound. The man's chest was seizing – yet Maker preserve him, he could not breathe. His throat constricted rapidly, vocal cords popping like bowstrings wrapped around a novice archer's finger – and Andraste save this faithful's soul, for he could not scream. Muscles went rigid. A sunburst of sweat dappled the tower's floor. Well-polished riding boots dragged themselves backwards through dust, alligator soles sliding belly-flat back into the swamp.

Leske's palms loitered in mid-clap, his wrists extended, charcoal eyes watching the murder with a mute sense of triumph.

The balls of Annie-Lynn's leathered feet left thick skid marks against limestone. She watched, entranced, a fine scarlet line that bloomed across this human's pronounced Adam's apple as it frantically jiggled in place. The dying man made clucking noises – peppered, self-entitled barnyard sounds like those from the smarting beak of any proper hen-house chicken.

When the dagger finally fell, it sent a sparse flower of blood drops careening in every which direction.

* * *

_Dice, garnet-red, combusted across the poorly-tiled floor._

"_Oh, sod it!" Leske had cried, shoving away from their makeshift gaming board with a furious scowl. His large fists popped themselves together before pant legs shouldered their dust. "I'll be a damn nug's uncle if I pay you one measly little copper, Brosca. You're a rotten, cheatin' broad. Sure as the Brand on your face!"_

_Annie had been far too busy celebrating her fourth consecutive victory to heed these unsporting words. She pumped a fist, cackling out laughter, and promptly launched the now-empty scrap metal casting canister in the direction of her sour friend. "Aw!" the dwarf snickered, scrambling to merry feet. Leske caught the launched tin can flat against his dented brow. "Are we feelin' a bit cross to have just proven ourselves the most-unluckiest duster in all Orzammar? Well, go soak yer' head in a barrel o' vinegar, mate! This round's mine."_

_Annie-Lynn sprung like a hungry fox kit, sunk stubby fingers deep into the flesh of her companion's cheeks, and mercilessly shook them out. The following roar of pain could've sounded no more anguished had it burst from a gutted genlock's peeling lips. _

"_An' so's your next shiny cut!" Leske had only biceps and his puff of indignation to counter Brosca's marsupial laugh._

* * *

Alistair's unprotected nails cracked painfully when he grabbed a fistful of stolen chainmail coif, tugging Annie out of the falling human's path – that powdery, blue-blooded body timbered like a lissome aspen. Her hand had lingered only inches away from rescuing the now stationary blade. Seconds too late to retrieve it, there Warden Brosca's able knife nevertheless remained; trapped beneath a growing shadow. Her galena-grey eyes traced that last wheat-shaft's length of sunlight sliding down its metal ridge before the guilty weapon disappeared.

Their victim gurgled wildly when his vertebrae engulfed its glittering, pointed edge. Yet still he fell – elbows popping against pavement, meat of both forearms slapping audibly against the plasma-wet rock.

Leske's applauding harrumph did well to project the ripple of catty, chocolate satisfaction Annie-Lynn felt at that very moment. She wrote a smear into the freckled mural of cooling burgundy with one boot's toe.

* * *

_Annie had stuffed the entire sodding fistful into her mouth before Ma' found time enough to lift one bony finger._

"_Stone take me, you wicked little child! What in the hells has gotten into that thick mug of yours?" Kalah screeched, voice a cold-edged eagle's rasp. Scarce months and countless drained rum bottles later would soften this hard mother's shrewd pecks into a stumbling, cotton-tongued drawl – but for now, Madame Brosca yet lipped down the daggers entrenched beneath her gums. For now, Annie-Lynn was still afraid. And deep below these glorious clumps of starch and flour that nestled eagerly upon her gut, there bubbled up the first caramel pangs of nausea. _

_Defiant – always heedlessly, numbly defiant – the eight-year-old hurried to swallow. She choked. _

_It was no harmless mistake, true enough; this act had been executed with pure, gluttonous intent. Annie well knew there were not enough coins jingling in her mother's badly-stitched burlap purse to pay for any pastry treats beyond those stale, week-old butter cookies that a pitying Baker Taldur sometimes sold them. They no doubt would've been bound for the incinerators, otherwise – far too subpar for any noble's tooth – yet both young Brosca girls muddled through their weeks for Monday mornings with desperate, quivering anticipation. The mere thought of crunching into a basket of sweets usually began dousing their houseless palates with saliva a full day beforehand. Yesterday, fortnight's worth of mouth sores were worth that brief, elated taste of cast-off luxury. _

_Today had been different. Today, Annie-Lynn had thought on how those unrefined granules of sugar would cut her throat with every dry gulp – and she'd been shaken by a sudden, poignant despair._

_Yes, Kalah's lastborn daughter had reached into the merchant's kiosk full-aware that what she'd been about to do was wrong. Paragons forgive her… because Mother never would._

* * *

"You ain't lost it – eh, Maddy?" Leske admired the preciseness of his comrade's butchery, tracing over lacerations as though they were gilded lines in a smith's handiwork. Calloused dwarven hands expressed their praise with a series of gruff pats upon Brosca's upper back. Alistair's fist was still clenched, skin freshly squeezed of color, in the scruff of her uniform collar. She could feel the metronome pulse of Ferelden's rightful king whacking through his arteries to hurtle against her adrenaline-stiff spine.

Once-templar and Gray Warden all, the killing still frightened Blondie; Annie could tell. He did not cringe, quail, or turn a cheek…yet there was something pale and unfamiliar that flooded the lad, dilating pupils and twisting his toes inward, when life drained from human bodies. Whereas hacking down darkspawn dually disgusted him and fed Alistair's deeply-nestled hatred on Duncan's behalf, glimpsing his face reflected in the fading eyes of a fellow Man scared Maric's son more than he could say. As the blood toll swirled higher at their party's hips, he felt that already fragile line between victor and victim thin. It took so very little force to snip it clean apart. The notion leveled him, grounded the surrealism that often accompanies death – but it was also terrifying.

"Reeling with fever an' all! First Beraht's sorry hide, and now this bloomin' outrageous son-of-a-nug? Brosca, you are a sodding beast." Annie-Lynn shared Leske's general vulgarity closely enough to appreciate this crass declaration as a compliment. She had expected the loud, flat-palmed swat on the rump, too – but not thoroughly enough to prevent her skittering hop and a few choice expletives. "Hah-hah! Ancestors kiss that great, glorious backside! You're bleedin' incredible, duster."

Annie looked coldly into the failing man's gloss-coated eyes, his throat puffing like a shad tossed to the grass. She could see that he wanted dreadfully to say something to her; longed to spit, curse, damn his slayer or vainly beg for mercy. Cleanly-shaven gills flared, pupils rolling frantically into their sockets. He spluttered, gargling – the top half of his torso lurching violently upwards to avoid its final slump onto a dirty tower floor.

* * *

_Annie-Lynn couldn't breathe. _

"_Spit it out!" the woman was screaming, dealing her child a wallop to the back that echoed in her heaving lungs. Kalah's face burnt venomous red, outshining a bundled length of carroty hair. "Spit that out right now, you misbegotten ghoul! Else I'll take a belt to you within an inch of your evil little life!"_

_The smallest Brosca girl would not have obeyed, even if she'd been able. Instead, both hands grabbed a dammed gorge with tightly-shut eyes. A multitude of tiny black braids that scattered about her face distorted the sight of Kalah's wild, enraged shrieks. Annie could not tell whether the livid woman was more upset with her daughter's blatant disobedience, silent gagging, or a startled Baker Taldur's summons for a guard. She'd been panicked – body thrumming its distress – yet somehow unafraid. The dough currently blockading her throat would suffocate this sinful child faster than Mother's empty threats ever would. _

_It was the first thing she had ever stolen – the virgin crime in a long list of offenses to come. Yes, Annie-Lynn recognized and embraced the foulness of her behavior; deserved whatever punishment might come. It had been a conscious decision. The rosy-lipped dwarven girl would not resist when retribution due arrived for her transgressions. She would pay penance for it now – asphyxiating in the weekday souk, with Orzammar passing indifferent around her and a lifetime gone unlived. _

_But oh, Stone, how wondrous that cake had been! How irresistible – with its august chocolate base, baronial and bittersweet, all lounging beneath a bravura of melting toffee. The aroma was so heavy she could almost taste it; nearly see her reflection in the glistening sheen of freshly-whipped frosting. Those two opulent layers comprised the most sumptuous feast the casteless waif had ever seen. Annie had wanted it more than anything she had yet wanted in her short, threadbare life._

_Brosca's daughter had been fifteen seconds from blackness when Kalah – eyes widened with sudden, horrified realization – bent her violently over a knee, rapping fist-against-diaphragm until she heard a gasp rake through Annie-Lynn's chest. Coffee bean oxygen tore into her lungs, carrying its sweet burn to the sinuses. Strangled sounds erupted from the clogged byway of her gullet. Mother's gaunt hands had never felt warmer when they seized her child's teary cheeks, pressed a kiss into the blushing nose, and then slapped Annie harder than she'd ever had or would. _

_The yearned-for delicacy had been reduced into a sad, deadly mound of dark-colored grains coughed out upon Orzammar City's cracked merchant square. _

* * *

Arl of Denerim no more, Rendon Howe's neck snapped the moment it hit Fort Drakon's unforgiving stone.

"Cake," Annie whispered. Then she pulled her dagger from his small intestine, and watched red droplets hit the floor.


	8. Skewer

**Skewer**

"Ow! I said '_ow'_, god-damn you! Get your clumsy bleedin' surface paws off my poor carcass b'fore I pretzel you, Clucky!"

This had – in all honesty – been Annie-Lynn's very best attempt at "thank you" to the whitening prince who was currently knuckle-deep in her wounded thigh, working to jimmy out a foot-long wooden splinter. It proved somewhat difficult to express this cottony wave of gratitude when his every unproductive tug gave way to muscle spasms and a litany of dwarven swears. Pry as though a pale-faced Alistair might, the tightly-packed meat upon Warden Brosca's femur absolutely refused to spit out its tetanused new friend.

Falling perfectly in-step with her newest unflattering nickname, the human nervously clucked his tongue. He had been doing this metronomically for the past ten minutes. To think on it, the last Theirin seemed to make this curt popping noise each time another short spurt of dwarven blood stained the packed-down slush of Soldier's Peak's deserted courtyard. It was the most annoying coping mechanism she had encountered to date.

"Maker's teeth, Annie!" her legit superior cried, exasperated both by jerking knees and undeserved insults. His large hands were beginning to shiver with bundled nerves, which did their attempt and mending her spitted limb no good. Damn it all, Alistair couldn't help but quake. It had only been a handful of minutes since the incident in which this nasty-looking barb sheathed itself deftly within their leader's leg, after all, and he had already poured two wicked-smelling health poultices into the oozing red grooves. "I'm trying to _help_ you! Maybe if you wouldn't thrash around so much…"

"Oh, go soak your fat head!" The statement ended in another well-placed, startled yelp.

Annie-Lynn was not precisely sure what foul, misleading sylph had whispered into her ear that sliding from an open window down the fortress's leant-over, flaky old oak buttress for a convenient exit had been a prudent course of action. Warden Brosca was sure-as-Stone going to pull off some dainty little fairy wings whenever she caught that flitting bitch, though. She'd scooted about seven feet before something long, peeling, and _very_ pointy snapped off and tumbled along with her.

Why – oh, bleeding Paragons, why? – had today been the first time in a month Annie'd left Wynne miles back at camp to sleep in.

"Holding your breath isn't going to solve anything, you know," Alistair scolded, and if Brosca had a sharp stick currently her her disposal, she would've jabbed it straight into the Warden's nicely-formed arse.

Well, at least she hadn't kicked him, yet… which was more than the cantankerous Brand could say for Morrigan. It had been completely accidental, truly – but explaining to a wolf that it's arrow-dotted hide was nothing more than an unfortunate mistake generally did not settle very well. Such was so for the slithering witch, who approached a howling Annie-Lynn without capturing her notice. _'Mayhaps if only Blondie had seen fit to sodding warn me,'_ she thought sorely, _'she wouldn'tve broke her sodding hand.' _Alas, it was not to be. When a sweaty, bewailing Brosca heard that terrifying, sinister 'click!' of colliding wrist bones, any and all shrieks seemed to evaporate midway through her throat. Her wildly flailing legs flopped limply onto the snow like a clubbed snake, horrified eyes widening to roughly the size of Olympic disks. Lord King Endrin's knickers, but that broad was scary. The guilty dwarf had fully expected to be turned into a bloody salamander. _'Yeah,' _her hypothalamus added. _'And then stepped on.'_

Ferelden had never seen a daughter of Flemeth cuss up such a storm.

"I'm going to die!" the rogue was screeching, teeth gritted hard as both hands clutched at her wounded hip. She did not seem to be lamenting this state of affairs so much as complaining about them; voice a strained, harassed moan. "Sod it, all! Jus' dig me a hole n' roll me into it – save me all this bloomin' torture!"

"Parshaara. You are not going to _die_, kabethari." Predictably, Sten was less-than savvy to the girl's sense of melodrama. He had stood utterly stoic and silent when Annie-Lynn collided face-first with the frosty ground, woodchip bristling from her hide, while Morrigan quite literally crumpled into a snowdrift – sinewy human body shaken by laughter.

A pink-cheeked Levi Dryden, looking rather ruffled, followed Alistair's orders and attempted to pin down Annie's dangerous left boot. This task was more challenging than it initially appeared. When he inevitably failed, the qunari – lofty in both stature and attitude – replaced their sandy-haired associate. Annie-Lynn immediately shut her hollering trap, settling instead for a series of half-hearted protests and groans. Whereas Maric's son and the lineage-hunting merchant had greeted an irate Warden Brosca with due anxiety, Sten remained unnervingly somber – fierce, defined white eyebrows carved immutably upon his leathery gray face.

Alistair finally grappled down upon his target and, with a short half-twist, wrenched the spike cleanly out of Annie-Lynn's thigh.

The horrid sound that went stampeding up Brosca's gullet, ricocheted off teeth, and then burst through the barricade of her mouth might well have caused a small avalanche.

"PRINCE BHELEN BALLS," the dwarf roared, clawing at her injured leg with a vengeance. She threw a nonsensical, defensive swipe towards Alistair's right elbow, which lingered painfully close to Annie's slowly-ebbing wound. He ignored it, too occupied with directing disgusted nose-wrinkles at the stained shaft of oak in both hands. "MAY ALL YOUR BLASTED GODS DAMN YOU SODDIN' BERKS! _AGH_!" She brayed it out like a foaling jenny, back arching in the crunching ice. Levi, wisely frightened by the girl's proceedings, hurried off to fetch an armful of bandages from their nearby pack. Proud Warden Brosca was rolling, now. "By the flamin' pits of Kal-Sharok, did that _hurt_!"

Levi came sprinting across the ice-crusted cobbles, and swathed Annie-Lynn's moderately-sized puncture wound faster than any trained military medic. The wrap clung sloppily to her ripped trouser leg, spare cloth sagging every few bands with inexperience – but it held, and was nevertheless leagues more welcoming than Alistair's rude digits. This mollified the venom-spitting rogue, somewhat. She withdrew a set of retractable fangs to wheeze out these grateful words:

"Ah, _Andraste_. Can you believe that? I'm down to thankin' yer' starry-eyed God-poppet for account'a _that_ mess bein' over." The confession babbled from her mouth like a whorl of cold air in late summer; it carried pure relief. When she sat up, full hemispheres of Annie's blackberry hair were splayed vertical – for frost flakes had entrenched there, rooster-like. The coterie was wise not to mention it. No doubt Morrigan might've felt a peppery comment burning the underside of her tongue, but – as she now nursed a freshly-jammed set of knuckles upon a faraway set of stone stairs – even their peevish witch remained silent.

Annie-Lynn wasn't exactly planning on sleeping alone tonight, however… figuring Mutt might smell the telltale embers of her tent lighting fire faster than an exhausted rogue.

Minutes passed which involved a rotating repertoire of deep dwarven breaths and pressing handfuls of slush against the ebbing throb in Brosca's thigh. When its sharp screams finally began to numb, a snow-damp children's glove reached out to lock upon the merchant's, pumping it – heedless of the rapidly chilling sweat speckled across her brow. "Dryden, bless those scrawny human legs o' yours. Yer' the only goddamn bloke of this soddin' bunch who halfway understands me."

Retrieving his well-worked hand, Levi blushed.

"Well, you must admit, _Annie_," the fair-haired Warden scolded, looking a bit put-out by her selective neglect. There was a particular, saline emphasis on the dwarf's name that could not be mistaken for anything but reprimand. "That was perhaps not your best-and-brightest idea of them all."

Brosca's plump bottom lip thrust itself over the wide-set top one, tar-colored eyes glinting hardly towards Alistair. Stinging, embarrassed, and slightly impaled, her cayenne mouth would not condescend to a direct response. "_Hmph_! Tell you what, Levi," she growled, grabbing onto the rising trader's thick belt so that he might lift her along. "You figure out how to work a sword proper, and you c'n have his job."

The look of fierce betrayal on Blondie's face was one typically reserved for the sons of adulterating mothers.

Annie-Lynn's healthy foot stuck itself firmly into the mire by the time he'd decided it necessary to help their unspoken leader walk. She'd been making decent progress, too – hopping stubbornly in step with Mister Dryden, fist balled tightly in a handful of his checkered winter tunic. The poor man didn't seem entirely sure how he should react, mouth set in a nervous sidelong slant across a triangular chin. He'd settled for a diplomatic hand hovering just behind Warden Brosca's shoulder, just in the event she took a sudden ice-induced tumble backwards. Levi could only imagine what filth an elegant fall upon that injured hip would summon from her markéd dwarven depths. As such, the merchant felt quite reassured when Alistair appeared beside him and unceremoniously hucked Annie over one armored shoulder.

And – Maker bless them all – but the little Brand was too tired and thoroughly pained to protest.

"Well, if it'll save ya' time," Brosca sighed, resigned, cocking chin-in-hand upon the breadth of human back. The Warden had all but chewed straight through her lip; a minor result of throbbing, mountain wind, and an extensive list of bad habits she'd already burned through. "The leg does hurt like a brothel full o' harpies… so I wouldn't want to be holdin' us back. Or bleedin' out b'fore we reach camp. Heh-heh." Her grimacing, obviously sheepish titter kindled a microbe of sympathy in Maric's son.

"'Ana will worry, 'sides," she quickly threw in, tone turning authoritative at this twitch of endearment she saw soften Blondie's features. The hangdog dwarf immediately set to cleaning out a furrow of his pauldron with one studious fingernail. "You know how she is. It'd be sort of an unkindness – making 'er worry n' wait, all cuz' of me bein' so gods-damn clumsy on top a' mulish – aye? At least I reckon so."

"Rather 'big' of you, Annie," was Alistair's answering dig.

"Doan' mention it." And she wormed that smarting elbow right down against the large, vulnerable tendon that arched across his neck. "_Ever_. Or else I tell everyone 'bout who _really_ buried Morrigan's under-things."

Though the Gray Wardens' cohorts never quite understood why, proud Ferelden's last-breathing heir was struck with an inexplicable case of the hiccups all the way down their mountain trail.


	9. Cardamom Winter

**Cardamom Winter**

Annie-Lynn stared at the neatly-wrapped bundle of pound cake, turned it reverently in her hands, and mulled hard.

She couldn't remember telling anyone about her birthday. Hell, the little dwarf wasn't all that unusual in regards to harboring a general tight-lipped attitude towards her sordid life in Dust Town. Toting around a nubby, snarled tumbleweed of baggage like that did no self-respecting woman any good – regardless of race or birthright. Far as Ferelden's current leading darkspawn-basher was concerned, gagging down that rancid mouthful of monster brine had been toasting to a brand new Annie; this shiny, unheeled and outspoken surfacer nut with one smarting kick and nothing left in Orzammar apart from her beloved Big Sissy. The less of that existence she hulked along into the Gray Wardens, the better. _'It's like ol' Ma always said: if you can't say somethin' nice…'_

Duncan had promised his freshest recruit that all previous transgressions would be forgotten in their distinguished troupe, which focused solely on the more important Here-and-Now. It was a sentiment Annie greatly appreciated – she would've told their stately commander exactly how much so, had the dwarf not been too busy stuffing her mouth with fistfuls of wild raspberries whilst on the prairie road to Ostagar. He'd been the one to point a scraggly patch of them out, actually – dually instructing his conscriptee on wildlife survival _and_ providing her a new wonder to stutter over. Snow had begun to wear welcome thin as it melted from the spine-rifled Frostbacks into these fir-stubbled yellow fields.

"_This place is great – it's soddin' great!"_ she had chattered to him, exited voice crackling in a high-pitched and uncharacteristic manner, its owner flickering close to 'utterly overwhelmed.' Seeds stuck antlike to her teeth, lips smacking around the fuzzy scarlet skin. _"Slap my knobby knees n' call me a troll-whore. You can just pick stuff up off the bleedin' ground and eat it,"_ the girl explained needlessly (gushed, really) to her newfound master with incisors stained red. Any regrets she might've once felt at leaving Orzammar had near dematerialized completely in the face of unearthed marvels. _"Just like that! S' flamin' incredible, s' what it is. You don't even know."_ Duncan – patient and good-natured old soul that he was – tuned out most of this deluge and bid her only wait for summertime, when fruit orchards would be in bloom.

The young Warden had earned a raging acid belly-ache when they finally reached camp that evening, but nothing in her dirt-encrusted life thus far had been quite so worth one night of restless sleep.

_Ironic_ – she sniffed the parcel of cake left sitting prettily upon her lumpy travel bedspread and detected sweet, pungent raspberry. No, Annie-Lynn had definitely not told anyone about her rotten, gift-less, and all-around unmemorable Dust Town birthdays.

'_Damn thing's probably poisoned,' _the girl thought, nose wrinkling fiercely when it considered what a grievous offense that spoiling such a fine-looking confection was. Her unbound length of coarse sable hair bristled both shoulder-blades. _'Still, if you gotta' go…'_

Annie carefully tugged out the yarn bowtie, unwrapped one corner of blush-pink wax paper, and broke off a sizeable piece. Dried fruit bits and freckles of chocolate winked harmlessly back up at her from the yellow sponge divan. It crumbled between two fingers; dense, tightly-packed – not quite fresh from the oven – but finely-ground like limestone. The cake was absent of frosting, but its doubled layers were mortared sloppily together with a rosy paste that looked like flavored whipped cream. If the question in mind throughout this entire process was indeed _"to taste or not to taste?"_… well,Brosca was already checked, processed and sold.

She swiped a thumb through the glossy core and sucked it clean. When this precursory test didn't instantly throw Annie-Lynn onto a patch of pebble-scaled grass, retching up her bloody insides, the rogue figured another trial might be safe. Necessary, even! This time, she was going to pluck out one of those beady semi-sweet flakes…

"Pardon me down there," a motherly voice interrupted, its words tinted with the constant pigment of smile. "Would you like some tea, Annie?"

_Wynne_. Brosca shoved the icinged prize beneath her ratty coverlet, twisting around to fix their silver-haired mage with an innocuous smile.

It wasn't as though Annie-Lynn didn't _like_ sharing. She certainly thought this little civil gesture was a marvelous invention whenever Leske came trolling back from the merchant quarter marketplace, munching on a paper conefull of stolen salted cashews. Dust Town had simply instilled a strange, primitive urge to horde in the piceous-eyed girl. Knives, stray gem shards, miscellaneous tack, snacks preserved for hard patches – they could all be found en masse by simply upturning Brosca's pack, rooting through its myriad hidden nooks. Hell, she'd been running around the Korcari Wilds those first fledgling days aboveground with a small apothecary jangling uncomfortably in her knapsack. A combination of prolific benefactors, fertile land and generous friends had abated the compellation somewhat… but upon occasion, Annie still felt that feral, indomitable push to survive; to undercut, steal, and store as necessary to secure her prolonged existence.

It was embarrassing, sure. Still, young Brosca didn't grow weepy-eyed over any realized social shortcomings. Lord High King God's-Grace-Upon-Earth Maric's own gold-laden blood proved no better, beside – for Sunshine got the same way whenever his paws locked around an ocher brick of cheese. Annie-Lynn remembered pestering him for a full hour by the bonfire one night, trying to sweetly cozen a sample from her senior Warden. _"I am unmoved,"_ he had announced, directing a great righteous snob at the girl before giving her a back fortified like a stone wall. When plump lips and watery dwarven eyes failed their creamery conquest, however, Annie just harrumphed before bringing up the 'Morrigan undertrews' incident again.

Blondie (blackmailed more so than persuaded) managed to part with the tiniest, most insignificant little shaving of cheddar. He was deeply offended when Annie about collapsed into a gagging fit, then proceeded to announce across all east Ferelden that her solitary bitter mouthful tasted like a certain _something_ Alistair felt was unmentionable even in the rankest of drinking matches.

Oh, well. Sunshine could have all the god-awful cheese he wanted, according to junior Warden Brosca. Just goes to figure this dog nation's infinitely wealthy bastard heir would have a burnt-out set of taste-buds.

"Sure, why not?" the girl chirped in response to Wynne's offer. This pleased the wiry mage, and so she sat – easing onto Annie's pallet slowly, so as not to overtax arthritic limbs. Brosca thoughtfully watched her indubitably creaky joints tuck themselves neatly together; observed how firelight interplayed against white locks, their texture of straw and color like finely-spun spider's silk. A small, portable tin cup was piping in one elegantly dappled hand.

Duncan had once tried to push some ghastly green beverage off on Annie – when she'd woken swathed a military cot after her Joining, melting in damp puddles of sweat. He'd claimed this foul-smelling concoction was "tea," as well. Brosca indulged one ladylike sniff of that steaming mug and declared she'd rather take another quaff off their tainted chalice. (No cocktail should taste like a sodding vegetable, after all.) Fortunately, Wynne's gift seemed leagues more pleasant; it was pale peach in color, milk-thin, with a cinnamonlike rime gathering at edges. The dwarf spotted undissolved sugar granules bobbing along a placid surface, as well.

In the usual brusque duster manner, Annie accepted their resident sorceress's goblet and – with one bold tilt of the chin – poured perfumed brew down her gullet. She frowned, thought on it a moment, and popped her lips.

"Well? I'm interested to hear your opinion," Wynne said, beholding Brosca curiously. The girl always had one to share, negative or positive.

"Oh, s' all right, I s'pose," was Annie-Lynn's ultimate decision. "Better'n anything the Wardens tried spooning me – that's damn sure." A pause. "Not that it's much sayin'… what with the whole blood-drinking thing they got going on. What is it?"

"It is a lightly sweetened tea made from ginger and cardamom." The woman handed her cherry-cheeked friend a thin cloth packet of herbs, removed from some discreet fold of lavender Circle robes. "I ground and mixed the ingredients myself… but apart from Sten, I'm afraid no one seems to much care for it. Ah, well." Wynne observed happily as Annie took another sip, fingering the strongly-smelling pouch. "It is my firm belief that one should always have access to a little tea on the road, don't you think so? There's not much better for soothing away those cold Ferelden nights."

"Yeah, though you can't really call tonight cold," the Warden noted, free hand riffling up grass blades that greened beneath her palm. "But I imagine we'll be back scrapin' out sleeping holes in the mountains soon enough, what with all these bleedin' politics."

The mage nodded. "Indeed," she sighed, taking a moment to enjoy the cicada symphonies of impending warm seasons. Wynne's sharp intellectual's profile caught moonlight at supple, waxing angles that softened her years like a well-loved whetstone to blade-ridge. Annie thought this wistful, ever-prudent instructor must've been a genuine looker, once. "At least you've got a bit of novelty attached to all this weather. Give it a few decades, my dear… you'll be groaning along with the rest of us every time a storm cloud rolls overhead."

"Or chomping on axes in the Deep Roads, more like," the dwarf snarked, unwitting as to how disheartening her (mostly) harmless snips could be. The youngest Brosca's humor was no fleet, slicing rapier – it was more like a seventy-pound ogre's bludgeon. Still, she had to snicker at the image of blood-sodden, spent Gray Warden elders pausing for a brief tea and crumpet intermission with Orzammar's infamous Dead Legion.

Wynne seemed to disregard the cynical comment – or gaze past it, tension erased by the easygoing half-smile lingering wearily upon her grooved lips. This woman had once been intense, severe and alarmingly bright – still counted among the last category – but now, peace exuded from her bones even with Blight looming overhead. She was a sinewy cedar tree, aged to a comfortable twilight where contributing shade and safe haven for wayward sparrows were among her utmost concerns. Annie-Lynn felt bizarre disquiet sitting beside the wrinkled sorceress, then – stubbing a toe over the knowledge she would never reach that unruffled decade where life gilt itself in simple grandeur.

They were alone at their camp's slumbering center, the inky northness of Ferelden's mist-dampened nightfall unobstructed. It was punctuated only by the crackling fire and Mutt's low faux-growls as Alistair annoyed him with a pile of sticks and repeated lame demands to "fetch!" that went ignored. Crickets milled loudly in the flaking red wood of highland trees, buzzing into pinecones. Annie thought she could smell a weighty rain shower past the primordial mask of fresh mud – but it was still several miles off, lingering decisively west. They'd probably be slogging along knee-deep in belching mire come morning, droplets plunking loudly off armor plates. Such was the source of much complaint and national pride.

Warden Brosca tugged a stray dagger out of its nearby resting mound, and began to scrape hanks of dried dirt from the tracks of her shoes. Another sip of thickening chestnut tea accompanied the idle task nicely.

"When I was girl," Wynne continued, musing fondly into the snapping firewood, "my Chantry mentor and I used to cook up the Circle alchemy reserves every winter making experimental teas. Cardamom was always my favorite, though. It got very drafty stuck up in that old tower. Days would pass where I'd drink it by the potfull."

Annie-Lynn smiled around a swig. They tiptoed on the cusp of spring, now – icicles dripping off the gnarled oaks and frost thawing from these marshlands – but it oft did wonders for morale to look forward a bit. "Maybe you c'n make me some next snowfall," the rogue suggested, giving her cup an approving slosh.

"Maybe just that." Wynne smiled at her – far-off, gentle, but somehow pointedly sly. "You should really try some with your cake, you know."

Brosca's perpetually flushed cheekbones singed a measurable shade darker. She fumbled under her disturbed twist of blanket to retrieve it, fingers busy tearing a chunk away for the graying sorceress. Annie was kindly waved off before completing this peace offer, however; left cradling a fragile handful of sweetbread and Wynne's self-satisfied laugher. The high notes sprinkled her lightly, teasing – like latent arrowheads tingling off a storage crate and onto castle flagstone. "Rest easy, my dear," the woman said, laying a pardoning hand on their little leader's wiry shoulder. "I'm quite glad you're enjoying it so much. One can only stomach so much of Leliana's mushroom stew."

The brass-knuckled duster momentarily looked like she might cry. Instead, Warden Brosca gummed down her amazement by staring into the mug, disrupting swirls of cream. "So you made this… for me?" Annie-Lynn was barely able to ask it without launching herself into a thespian-worthy scene.

Wynne's boughs tittered with chuckles. "No, dear! I'm not that much of a saint. I simply saw it sitting in a baker's window when we last passed through Redcliffe, and thought you might like something special. Among all that dreadful preparation business about the Landsmeet, however, I confess I didn't have the opportunity to give it to you. Slipped my mind, perhaps. You'll have to forgive the senilities an old woman. I do think it's still edible, fortunately. Ferelden desserts are more durable than most."

"Last week. It was my birthday," Annie mumbled, tongue swelling resolutely in between her teeth. No one had ever gotten the girl a real present – certainly not Ma,' who was lucky enough to feed both daughters on a regular basis. Absent of any real income, a guilt-ridden Rica usually tried to gift her decidedly roughened-looking sister with luxurious hand-me-downs from would-be suitors, bidding she put these various pieces of glamour to better use. They were indeed beautiful; shimmering, lacquered pearls or etched bangles of gold. But blood money was blood money. Normally the concept wouldn't have bothered young Brosca, churlish knee-cracker of Beraht's truculent carta – had it been any blood but Sissy's. Hell if she'd rip whore profits off her own sibling's pimp. Hence, Kalah's youngest had gone much unaffected by the milestone of years; skipping along on stolen merchandise and glistering nothings swiped from lowbrow merchant nobility.

Wynne's splinter eyebrows ascended in surprise. "Oh," she pleasantly remarked. "Well! Happy birthday, then, my Gray Warden."

Annie-Lynn could think of nothing meaningful to say – but hugged the mage so viciously, she might've snapped ribs.


End file.
